The following is a list of Jihadist-inspired terrorism attacks inside the U.S. since 9/11/01. The list excludes foiled attempts, but includes failed attempts. I will separately endeavor to prepare a list of foiled attacks at a later period.[1] I define failed attacks as those for which an individual initiated the sequence of attacking, but was unsuccessful in achieving their full range of objectives. I define foiled attacks as those for which an individual hadn’t had an opportunity to initiate the sequence of attacking, but for which they had demonstrated an intention (and possibly coupled with the capability) to do so. All attack information comes from open sources and is verifiable by simple internet searches. Any disputation of facts is welcome.
As some may notice, the list also excludes other forms of domestic terrorism (actual, failed and foiled). Another word of caution for using this short dataset is that affiliation with a specific transnational Jihadist organization can sometimes be difficult to discern. Anyone wishing to research organizational affiliation, should either consult at least two corroborating open sources, or read the official indictments attending any subsequent prosecution.
Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF):
A summary glance at the data reveals that from December 2001 through June 2017 (the period covered herein):
Domestic Attack Data
Concluding Analytical Remarks
One conclusion that could readily be drawn is that Jihadist-inspired attacks may be affiliated with an organization per se, however, the attackers don’t always seem to express a clear affiliation. Despite individual allegiances to organized external terrorist groups, each attacker appears to have adhered to a Jihadist ideology. As the Islamic State’s power profile dwindles, as did al-Qa’ida’s in the past, there is reason to believe that although it may reduce some of the entity’s cyber presence, it is likely not going to eliminate Jihadist attacks.
I’d like to invite any serious analyst who seeks to collaborate in constructing an open-source, publicly available, database of foiled attacks to join me in that endeavor. Additionally, anyone who is presently working on a terrorism project that desires review, assistance, editing, or a contributing author is welcome to reach out to me or my associates at TRAC Intelligence, LLC.
[1] As certain names will appear in a separate database, they are deliberately being excluded here. For instance, two separate attacks connected to the June 2015 arrests of Munther Saleh, Imran Rabbani and Fareed Mumuni, also resulted in the arrests of Nader Saadeh, Aala Saadeh and Samuel Rahamin Topaz. The latter three did not initiate the sequence of attacking and hence would appear in a “foiled attack” database.
[2] Edged weapons are included in the “knives” category for the sake of convenience.
Is the Islamic State Worth Destroying? From a moral standpoint, one can’t help but answer the question in the affirmative. How can one sit idly by, as the world did when Fascism spread throughout Europe and Southeast Asia? Then again, none of the major powers really became heavily involved until either a surprise attack befell them, and/or their treaty obligations with another major power required them to act. Even then, the British merely sent an Expeditionary Force and the U.S. steered clear of major combat operations in Europe, until the enemy’s weaknesses could be favorably exploited. Nonetheless, acting against modern-day fascists is a worthy cause. And fascism is precisely the term to describe the so-called Islamic State and their ilk.
The scourge of terrorism has been with the world for centuries, but the 21st century has seen an almost unprecedented resurgence in hateful, murderous behavior. Unfortunately, in many ways the technological revolution brought about by the advent of the internet and personal computers has facilitated this rise, in four particular ways. Continue reading
By: David Firester
The Global Terrorism Database (GTD), which is managed by the University of Maryland’s federally funded National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) recently released its 2015 user-friendly database to the public. The significance of such a robust catalogue of terrorism is that it is used to generate scholarly articles and to supply the Department of State, among other agencies, with a factual basis on which to author official reports. In turn, such reports may be used to buttress open-source foreign policy assessments and perhaps inform decision makers. It is therefore very important to understand the degree of accuracy associated with the GTD’s statistics, as well as the attendant policy implications that might be drawn from them. Although there are many areas in which to focus one’s review of the database, this article is primarily concerned with the inferences that might be mistakenly arrived at with regard to the situation in Israel. I have found a few trends, and some factual errors, which I will highlight and analyze below. My aim here is to alert future researchers and decision makers to the distortion of material facts, and the attendant conclusions, that may be discerned from this particular macro-level database.
The “Israel” Dataset
The GTD indicates that there were 58 incidents of terrorism in Israel (excluding the West Bank and Gaza) in 2015. Of that number, 8 were said to be committed by “Israeli Extremists” (7), or “Jewish Extremists” (1). In reviewing these instances, I found that one such event may not have occurred at all (201510030023). The single source cited could not be found in any online search (e.g., Lexis Nexis, Google Scholar and general Google searches yielded no results). Additionally, no attack type, no weapon type, and no named perpetrator were listed in the database. Nonetheless, the GTD summarized the incident in the following way, “Assailants attacked an Arab driver in Jerusalem, Israel. A pedestrian was wounded in the attack. No group claimed responsibility for the incident; however, sources attributed the attack to Israeli extremists” [emphasis added]. A single illusive source is hardly evidence of an event having transpired.
In researching another incident (201510130038), committed by “Israeli Extremists,” it initially appeared to me that the GTD missed an Arab terrorism event (in East Talpiot/Armon HaNatziv). That attack resulted in 2 Israeli deaths, one of whom was an American citizen, despite the fact that the GTD reported zero American deaths, coded as “nkillus,” for 2015 inside Israel. This came to light as I was reading the two source documents the GTD attributed to the “Israeli Extremists” attack. Both articles cited 4 other Palestinian attacks, of which the GTD only accounted for 3. I did discover, however, that the GTD coded the East Talpiot/Armon HaNatziv event as occurring in the “West Bank and Gaza Strip” dataset. The database specifically names the intersection of Olei HaGardom St. and Moshe Barazam Street [sic; Barzani is the correct spelling] as the location in which the attack occurred. Although the attack did take place on the first of the two named streets, there is no indication that it did so at the intersection of the second.
A reasonable question to ask is why such a minute detail matters for the integrity of the database. The answer is that if the attack were to truly have taken place where the GTD says it did, then it would support a narrative that the lethal attack on Israelis (and in this case an American) occurred in the so-called “occupied territories,” thus lending credence to the oft-cited attack rationale associated with “resistance to the occupation.” Indeed, the GTD gives the coordinates 31.749712/ 35.236954, which is a Jewish neighborhood in East Jerusalem. This seemingly minor detail also informs the analyst as to where the GTD has decided to draw its own lines.
The “West Bank and Gaza” Dataset
Beyond the “recognized” borders of the State of Israel, which the GTD has apparently defined for researchers (see my above analysis), they consider the “West Bank and Gaza” in a separate dataset. With regard to Jewish or Israeli perpetrators, they code them as either “Israeli Extremists,” (always listed as plural) or “Israeli Settler” (always listed as singular). Such a distinction appears to be arbitrary, but one matter worth consideration is that to call someone a “settler” undermines the legitimacy of their legal status as a citizen. In this respect, the GTD staff is discriminating in a way that appears to be other than neutral.
To summarize the statistics, the combined total number of attacks for 2015 in the “West Bank and Gaza” dataset numbered 247, with 120 non-perpetrator deaths (including 3 U.S. citizens), and 242 injuries (including 3 U.S. citizens). The number of attacks attributed to “Israeli Extremists” was 5 and “Israeli Settler” was 14, for a total of 19 out of the 247 attacks, or just under 8%, being committed by Jews/Israelis. It should be noted that all attacks in Gaza, which numbered 32, exclusively featured Arab attackers and/or Arab victims and resulted in no fatalities.
With regard to the “West Bank” portion of the dataset, looking closely at the alleged attacks by Israeli settlers/extremists, reveals some strange coding preferences that require further analysis. For instance, on October 9 in Kiryat Arba, an event (201510130063) occurred, for which the perpetrating party was coded as “Israeli Settler.” According to the GTD, the incident resulted in no injuries and no weapons were used. The single source upon which the GTD relied was from a Palestinian news agency, Ma’an, which produced pictures that didn’t necessarily indicate an act of violence per se. Rather, while carefully reviewing the photographic “evidence,” it appears that the Palestinian journalists entered a Jewish neighborhood to report on an incident occurring nearby, in which a Palestinian dressed as a journalist, stabbed an Israeli soldier, and were subsequently being forced to lower their cameras. This event took place during the most violent month of October and given the above-described specific circumstances was likely a defensive measure, rather than an act of “terrorism” that the GTD ascribes to “Israeli Settler[s].” In the database, there is room to indicate if there is doubt that an act is terroristic in nature. None was conveyed for the instant case.
Another incident is even more troubling, because it actually didn’t happen. While attempting to corroborate the single source cited for an alleged attack on a mosque in Mughayir, it became apparent that the GTD actually recycled an article from al Jazeera that dated from 2011. Indeed, all of the alleged “facts” in the GTD database were identical to the story that was promulgated by al Jazeera four years earlier.
For two “terrorism” incidents (201502250058/201502250059), which involved the alleged firing of automatic weapons at Palestinian homes, the GTD used a single, uncorroborated, source: The Muslim News. Judging from the language used in the article, there is reason to believe that it may not have occurred. Even still, there could at least have been an indicator as to the veracity of its alleged occurrence. The GTD’s staff doesn’t issue such assessments. That is the job of the analyst.
While investigating a vandalism attack (201503040051), which likely did occur and was categorized by Israeli authorities as “Jewish terror,” according to one of the two sources the GTD used, an event (201411120036) from the previous year was mentioned. In that event, it was alleged by local Palestinians that a mosque in Mughayir was set ablaze by Jews. As the article points out, however, the police determined that the cause of the fire was faulty wiring. To their credit, the GTD did state that it may not have been terrorism, although the incident remains in the database from 2014. The unfortunate result is that deficient Palestinian engineering is given the equivalent status of an act of Jewish terrorism in the database.
In another likely case of an electrical fire having been mistaken as a Jewish terror attack (201508240041), the GTD, again to its credit, did indicate doubt that terrorism was afoot. However, as in the previous unlikely incident, this too is counted in the aggregate as resulting from Jewish terror.
Severity of Jewish/Israeli Attacks
For all of the purported Israeli attacks inside Israel (not including the West Bank and Gaza), only 1 (5%) resulted in the death of a (non-Arab) civilian, whereas the total number of recorded deaths (not including those of the perpetrators) in Israel for 2015 was 20. In the instant case, the only one in which the GTD labeled the single assailant as “Jewish Extremists” [sic], the perpetrator attacked a Gay Pride parade for the second time and was consequently sentenced to life in prison. This event was very much an anomaly in that attacks against fellow Israelis for their sexual orientation is a rare occurrence. What is notable is that not only does the State of Israel apprehend, prosecute and punish Israelis who perpetrate violence against Arabs, but also against those who attack gays. Although I may be stating the obvious, for context’s sake it is well-known that Israeli tolerance of others’ identities is evidenced by the fact that it is by far the only gay-friendly country in the region (to include Arab-controlled territory in the West Bank and Gaza).
With regard to attacks by Jews/Israelis in the West Bank (recalling that Gaza had none), only 1 of the 19 was lethal, but it resulted in 3 deaths, accounting for about 2.5% of all deaths caused by terrorism in this particularly named area. It was the July 31 arson attack against a Palestinian home, for which a man and a minor were originally indicted, although it remains unclear if the man had acted alone. Nonetheless, Israeli authorities have been actively pursuing the suspect’s potential ring of similar offenders. Again, we have prima facie evidence that the Israeli government takes Jewish violence seriously. Of the 19 attacks carried out by Jews/Israelis, 12 (63%) were with an incendiary device, 4 by firearms (21%), 1 chemical [tear gas] (5%), 1 melee (5%) and 1 unknown (5%).
Context
What a database can’t provide is context. This effort requires an analyst. For example, in the “Israel” dataset, 2 attacks, or 25% of all Israeli/Jewish attacks, were arsons against churches. In another example, an attack was alleged to have occurred in Netanya (201510090056), in which the GTD cites “sources attributed the attack to Israeli extremists.” Again, there was an uncorroborated single source, which, when checked, referenced a different article in which the account (in Hebrew) described a back and forth exchange between Jews and Arabs, the latter of whom were allegedly shouting, “Allahu Akbar.” At the time in which this incident took place, 6 Palestinian terrorist attacks had already occurred inside Israel that month and 9 in the “West Bank and Gaza.” Indeed, October was the most violent month in 2015, featuring 26 out of 58 attacks, or 45% for the “Israel” dataset that year. Of this figure, 5 of the 26 attacks were coded as Israeli/Jewish, 19% of the monthly total, representing 63% of the 8 that occurred that year in the “Israel” dataset.
In the “West Bank and Gaza” dataset, October was, similar to attacks in the “Israel” dataset, the most violent month of the year. It featured 72 attacks, or 29% of the total number of attacks in the West Bank and Gaza. For a comparative assessment, the previous 7 months featured a total of 74 attacks. The proportion of attacks by “Israeli Extremists,” or “Israeli Settlers,” when compared to attacks by others in that month was 6 out of 72, or 8% (in line with the previously addressed annual percentage).
Combining the two datasets (see Appendix A), the data shows that of the total 305 terrorist attacks the GTD recorded for 2015, 27 (9%) were committed by Jews/Israelis, which if adjusted for the aforementioned fact that at least one attack didn’t occur and several others could not be substantiated would reduce the percentage to something around 8%. Privileging the raw figures provided by the GTD, during the month of October, the total ratio of Jewish attacks to that of the Palestinians was 11:98, or 11%.
Analysts may be inclined to explore two distinct causal factors to explain the October violence. First, any actions of the Israeli military should be considered. Such actions do not meet the GTD’s definition of terrorism and would therefore not appear in the database. Secondly, any widespread Palestinian media campaigns that aimed to incite violence, which the GTD also doesn’t include, should be investigated. A single Israeli military action, or Palestinian broadcast, would likely not account for the level of violence that persisted at a high tempo beyond the month of October. Therefore, one should gauge their search results with an eye toward intensity, duration and chronological sequencing.
Conclusion and Implications
The complete picture of the data is represented in Table 1 (Appendix A), which can be summarized as follows. Jewish terrorism during 2015 represented approximately 10% of the total monthly attacks for the year, with 4 months having no attacks. The monthly percentage never exceeded 11%, even in the most violent month of October. The overall statement about non-Jewish terror is that it was quite the opposite. The average monthly attacks were 90% and there were no months in which non-Jewish (read: Arab) attacks numbered less than 5. There were some months, however, when Jewish attacks were 0 and the non-Jewish attacks were as follows: January (15), April (14), May (10) and September (13). During months when Jewish attacks were 1, non-Jewish attacks were as follows: March (5), June (8), and in two extraordinary months, November (49) and December (42).
In light of these statistics, one of the trends that appear to be obvious is that the Palestinian attack intensity increased in October, with no apparent connection to any Israeli attacks having occurred the previous month. Another trend appears to be that once Israeli terrorism was at its peak in October, it quickly diminished to 1/month for the next two months. This was despite the third apparent trend, which was that non-Israeli terrorism slowly diminished during the same period. One could therefore say that Arab terrorism ratcheted up quickly, but down slowly (and painfully). One additional insight is that Arab terrorism appears causally unconnected with Jewish terrorism.
Although the GTD does capture a fair number of incidents, its database is largely populated by students, who respond to directions provided to them by algorithms. The result is that one who is unaware of the context of particular conflicts, as well as some of the nuances that attend it, may not generate an accurate threat picture with regard to terrorism. For instance, the Israeli Security Agency (Shabak) composes its own, publicly available, annual reports on terrorism. Its 2015 report reflects statistics that differ markedly from those of the GTD database, but more scholars and policy analysts may be inclined to use the latter, rather than the former.
The reasons that the GTD’s aggregate data differs from that of the Shabak’s are threefold. First, there is a difference in the way attacks are calculated. The GTD doesn’t include many of the failed or foiled attacks, nor does it consider most rocket/missile/mortar attacks originating in Gaza. This is a bit odd, considering that the GTD’s “Data Collection Methodology” includes “an intentional act of violence, or threat of violence by a non-state actor” [emphasis in the original]. One might be inclined to assume that the GTD considers Hamas to be a state actor. However, this would be out of step with the fact that they did record a Hamas assassination attempt within Gaza (201502160091) in 2015. Additionally, the GTD recorded (in the Israel dataset) only one rocket fired from Gaza (201510100023), but indicated that the assailants were “unknown,” therefore not coding them as “Palestinian Extremists.” To wit, there are only Palestinians living in Gaza and the act of firing on a civilian population is patently extreme.
The other requirements that the data must meet also render the exclusion of Hamas/Gaza as suspicious. According to the GTD’s methodology, two of the following three criteria must be met:
In looking at projectile attacks emanating from Gaza, one can’t logically conclude that it fails to meet the benchmarks set forth by the GTD. In fact, Hamas’s attacks qualify on each of the 3 grounds. It cannot reasonably be argued otherwise, unless the data coders are in agreement that such actions are somehow legitimate. This would place the GTD firmly in the camp of those who assert the rights of Hamas/Gaza to attack Israel. Such an inference, if it were correct, would undermine the credibility of START as a nonpartisan think tank. After all, the center is a “Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence.”
The second reason that the GTD’s data differs from that of the Shabak’s has to do with the way in which it distinguishes territorial lines. As was already mentioned, the GTD has two distinct datasets for “Israel” and the “West Bank and Gaza.” Scholars who miss this fact will arrive at some very skewed conclusions. Even when accounting for this fact, however, the statistics are still vastly different.
Thirdly, the GTD doesn’t appear to retrospectively analyze the data it collects, although its leading scholars use the data to produce peer-reviewed journal articles and books. Again, I have listed a few occasions in which a matter was either reported to be a terrorist incident when it turns out not to have been, or an incident was said to have taken place when it seems likely that it did not. I have also pointed out the many events that the database has missed. The unfortunate consequence is that the GTD’s aggregate data enables those who conduct macro-level studies to manipulate it in such a way as to draw imprecise conclusions. This is the precise reason why I have offered a micro-level assessment of the GTD’s database with regard to a specific independent variable, Israeli/Jewish terrorism.
Bio
David Firester is the founder and CEO of TRAC Intelligence (Threat, Reporting, and Analysis Consultants), which is a premier threat analysis firm. TRAC Intelligence provides threat assessment in the private sector.
Appendix A: Visual Data
Despite the various faults with the data, identified above, the following is a visual summary of the GTD’s combined datasets, “Israel” and the “West Bank and Gaza.”
Table 1: Average Monthly Attacks in “Israel” and the “West Bank and Gaza” 2015
Graph 1: Numerical Expression of Average Monthly Attacks in “Israel” and the “West Bank and Gaza”
Graph 2: Percentage Expression of Average Monthly Attacks in “Israel” and the “West Bank and Gaza”
Potentially Misleading Statistics on Global Terrorism
Recently, the 2015 statistics were released by the Global Terrorism Database (GTD), hosted at the University of Maryland’s National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START). Prior to making the data publicly available, of course, scholars associated with START took the liberty of publishing their own articles while access was monopolized. The State Department also got a head-start on putting out its 2015 report on terrorism, based largely on START’s work. This is somewhat fitting, as START’s funding comes exclusively from federal dollars. Aside from a little monopolization of publicly funded databases, there are some important misleading conclusions that the layperson might be inclined to draw. I will explain how and why this is the case.
In considering the recent GTD data release, Andrew Flowers (of FiveThirtyEight) did interpret something correctly when he observed that “Terrorism Declined Last Year- but Not in the West.” In his brief article, he correctly cited START’s GTD statistics that support the claim that terrorism was reduced abroad from the previous year (2014). However, in his search to understand why, he interviewed the GTD’s program manager, Erin Miller, who stated that “it’s possible that ‘2014 was just a really bad year and 2015 was still violent but somewhat less so by comparison.'” This is somewhat incomplete, because it doesn’t take into account the shifting sands, so to speak, in the battle against the Islamic State (IS) transnational terrorist army. For instance, the introduction of Russian Airstrikes would have had some impact on the Islamic State’s ability to act effectively in carrying out terrorist attacks in the region. Additionally, the combined efforts of the Iraqi/Iranian governments and U.S. (and allied) air support had to have hindered some of the key logistical elements that IS would have needed to attack locally.
Another area in which START’s GTD is less than helpful is in their methodology. The GTD claims, and Ms. Miller is cited by Flowers as stating that, the classification for terrorism includes “threatened or actual use of illegal force and violence by a nonstate actor…”[Emphasis added.] The problem is that the database doesn’t include failed or foiled attacks; many of which were Islamist-inspired. In 2015 alone there were at least 56 arrests on ISIL-related charges in the U.S. (note that the figure might be higher, as the report only covered the period ending November 12, 2015). This statistic is not captured in GTD’s database, while many of the alleged “terrorism” events didn’t meet their own criteria to be so labled (6 out of 38, or 16%). Yet, Flowers cites Miller’s example of church arsons in what appears to be an effort to claim racially motivated (read: right-wing) violence. The implication one might incorrectly discern is that there are fewer instances of Islamist violence, or planned violence, than other sorts of terrorism, or suspected terrorism.
A more appropriate set of conclusions to be drawn are two-fold. First, terrorism abroad has been hindered in the Middle East as a result of a broad offensive against its primary perpetrators. Much of the IS-related attacks in the region have been carried out as operational-level strikes that support the ongoing insurgency. The second conclusion is that domestically, terrorism has been on the rise, but Islamist-inspired terrorist plots have been disrupted far more frequently as a result of law enforcement’s due diligence.
Although Mr. Flowers mentions “the killing of three Muslims in Chapel Hill, North Carolina” as the “fourth-deadliest attack in the U.S. last year,” he doesn’t mention that even the GTD doubts it was motivated by anti-Muslim hate. Absent in many discussions of global terrorism trends (including the piece under review here) is that of the 10 most deadly terrorist organizations in 2015 a full 90% were Islamists (mostly allied with IS and a couple with al-Qaeda). This is, of course, obscured by focusing on the extremely rare instances in which Muslims are killed by non-Muslims and ignoring the patent fact that most Muslims (and many non-Muslims; especially in the Middle East and Europe) are victims of Islamist terror.
David Firester is the founder and CEO of TRAC Intelligence (Threat, Reporting, and Analysis Consultants), which is a premier threat analysis firm. TRAC Intelligence provides threat assessment in the private sector.
Framing Orlando: An Act of Terrorism or a Hate Crime?
The murder of 49 Americans in a Gay Nightclub is both an act of terrorism and a hate crime. The elite Left will play down the shooter’s Muslim identity and then proceed to shift the focus to push a narrative that “guns kill people” and not the people themselves or the ideology that fuels their murder sprees. Contrary to that position, however, it is more reasonable to assert that Islamic Jihadist Terrorism is itself based on a hate-filled ideology. It is both hate and terror. It is not all about guns, but in the coming days Americans will be bombarded with a heavy dose of propaganda that makes it seem to be so.
Yesterday, a radical Islamist carried out his hate-filled act of violence against a Western target. He, who shall not be named here, deliberately sought to inflict pain, death and ultimately terror upon people who were pursuing their happiness as they saw fit. The inclination of some is to try to understand why this has happened and look for a means to avoid it in the future. The bad news is, many politicians are afraid to combine the words “Radical” and “Islam.” What is worse, however, is that many will now try to retrospectively reconstruct what caused this violence to take place and then take the sort of misguided action that logically flows from their pronouncements. So, what can we expect from the American Left?
One can expect that a discussion of “gun control” will ensue, as it already has. The reason is that the shiny object represents a low-hanging fruit, which makes the politician’s job easier. This is because politicians need to be seen as acting on the heels of a national tragedy. Treating a symptom as though it were a cause is the fastest way to do this and the American political Left is very adept in this regard.
The aforementioned tactic is very attractive and powerful, even in the face of contradictory evidence. Some examples to consider are the fact that the mass casualty attacks in London, Madrid, Brussels, Paris (twice), and yes, Boston, largely featured explosives. To be sure, firearms were present in the Paris attacks, but they were wielded by the terrorists. Citizens, after all, are not allowed to defend themselves by owning firearms in France.
Some additional evidence undermining the “guns kill people” diatribe could be seen in the fact that terrorist attacks needn’t be carried out by any firearms. The Palestinians, ever the terrorism innovators, have shown that vehicles and kitchen knives (and the potential use of terror tunnels) can cause mass casualties.
With regard to global terrorism trends, between 1970 and 2014, as reported by the University of Maryland’s National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) Global Terrorism Database (GTD), bombings/explosions have accounted for approximately 68,779 attacks in that period (see Table 1). Astonishingly, the trend over the past several years has been an exponential annual increase, more than tripling between from 2011 to 2014 (see Table 2).[1]
The GTD data from 2015 has yet to be released and therefore doesn’t include the two Paris attacks, nor the Brussels attack.[2] The sum total of bombings, however, is reported to be approximately twice the number of assaults by firearms. Nonetheless, one can see that a murderous rampage doesn’t require a firearm; commitment will suffice.
People carry out mass casualty attacks against a variety of targets for diverse reasons, to include the efforts of a suicidal man who hurled a homemade bomb at an airport check-in counter in China today. Only four people were injured, but the non-firearm attack could have easily produced deaths and more injuries. However, it seems that the more recent attacks against the West have been fueled by a hateful ideological set of priorities. Two operational principles, taken from the lexicon of political science, should be kept in mind as the aftermath of the Orlando event unfolds. First, politicians will attempt to “cue” people who seek to understand where it is they stand on this particular issue. The second is the “framing” of the issue, which is the effort to assert that something is a case of one thing and not another.
The cueing by politicians on the Left will likely be coordinated by what some call an Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF). This network doesn’t merely consist of political people, but includes news outlets, think tanks and academics who share a similar ideology. People who generally tend to agree with the general view of a particular party, politician, news outlet, or blogger, will tend to tune into the source that is most pleasing to them. Hence, if you are a Leftist, you will not be reading The Wall Street Journal or listening to Fox News; you’ll be tuned into satirical “info-tainment” such as The Daily Show, or reading The New York Times.
The ACF will work to frame the event as part of a series of mass casualty violent shooting incidents, with most of the emphasis placed on the weapons chosen. The least emphasis, and what really makes for bad policy, will be placed on calling out the root cause of this specific type of mass casualty event: radical Islam.[3] This pathway is disastrous, but it is predictable. In fact, feel free to return to this prediction in the weeks and months ahead.
Table 1: Global Terrorist Bombings 1970 – 2014
Source: GTD, as of June 13, 2016
Table 2: Global Terrorist Bombings 2011 – 2014
| Year | No. of Attacks |
| 2011 | 2605 |
| 2012 | 5087 |
| 2013 | 6684 |
| 2014 | 8802 |
Source: GTD, as of June 13, 2016
[1] Although bombings outnumber shootings, this should not be eclipsed by the fact that they often go hand-in-hand and may form part of a larger combined arms campaign. Additionally, the GTD fails to account for many types of incidents where a death or injury did not occur. In this regard, the thousands of missiles launched into Israel from Gaza are almost completely missed in the data.
[2] A preliminary report, however is available online and has been generated in a more robust format by the U.S. State Department.
[3] When using the terms “radical Islam” in combination, one shouldn’t think that the notion that the ideas are radical to Westerners necessarily indicates that they are so for Muslims in general.
For more academic work, visit David Firester on ORCID.org
Syrian Penetration of the Southern European Front: Observations and Implications
Recently, I had occasion to travel to southern Europe. Specifically, I was on the border of Greece and its northern neighbor, Macedonia. I was rather interested in gauging the Syrian refugee issue from the standpoint of a passerby. What I noticed was that all along the road leading from the border toward Thessaloniki one could see gas stations filled with tents, kids playing soccer, women cooking on open fires and men walking along the road; a few of whom were hitchhiking (shown below).
What stood out to me was the sheer number of military age males, many of whom were equipped with cell phones. The experience generated two questions. First, where do desperate refugees acquire the funds to purchase cell phones and data/voice plans that would work in Europe? Secondly, is it possible that the men were merely innocent victims in Syria’s half decade of civil war?
One can only surmise that the first question could be answered with the discovery of additional evidence. Nonetheless, it is curious. The second question, however, seems to be more thought-provoking and the answer is partially known. As anyone keeping up with the news can plainly see, the latest source of attacks in Europe have come from the Arabic-speaking conflict zones. The Islamists who carried out assaults on Western Europe apparently mixed in with the majority of innocent refugees. What the men have in common with each other is that they are all fighting age. What they also have in common is an allegiance to the latest (and most powerful) iteration of political Islam: The so-called Islamic State (IS/ISIS/ISIL/Da’esh).
One may be inclined to believe that the presence of military age males with cellphones among women and children is insufficient evidence of the potential for terrorism to materialize as they move into central and Western Europe. That is a fair guess. Yet guessing incorrectly has deadly consequences. To wit, if one casually peruses YouTube for Syrian war videos, one will notice that not only are there no moderate forces, but nearly all interviewed fighters espouse some degree of Islamist sentiment. In fact, most videos are posted by various Islamist elements; be they IS, Jabhat al Nusra (the al-Qa’ida branch in Syria), or any of the dozens of other smaller fighting units.
Hence, military age males coming from Syria (and other regional conflict zones of a similar sort) could not entirely be dismissed as mere victims of violence. With the exception of a number of non-Arab Kurdish factions, it would be counter to the Arab men’s survival instincts to imagine that they fought alongside moderate Arab militias. This is plausible for one important reason: there are none. The Free Syrian Army has patently been shown to be a farce and, oddly enough, the Syrian government forces are the only Arab moderates, if the term could be applied at all.
Although the Macedonian government gets it right in not allowing the undocumented to transit through their country without papers that carry them to the other side, this country of limited size and wealth will likely suffer the fate that awaits them when a few bad actors unlawfully slip through the cracks. As I left Macedonia, it was relayed to me by some civilians that they encountered two Arab men approximately 8.5 miles inside of Macedonia, in a mountainous area that is inaccessible by vehicular means. The Arab men asked in English where the road to Serbia could be found. Startled, the civilians pointed in the opposite direction, toward Greece. Hopefully the Macedonian border guards have since scooped them up.
Beyond Macedonia
While I was at a major train station, Praterstern, in Vienna a few days after my Macedonia/Greece border observation, I noticed something else. When the sun went down, young Arab males were hanging out at the main exit/entry point to the station. What they were doing was staring folks down, playing loud Arabic music and generally being rowdy and rude. For someone to imagine that they are merely displaced and alienated by Austrian society one could easily, yet incorrectly, conclude that their behavior is a result of their isolation; shifting the blame to Austrian society. This is precisely the sort of tactic that (Leftist) refugee sympathizers typically employ: blame the nation to which an external and unyielding population has sought to establish itself.
Promoting narrative fallacies is bad enough, but the policy implications are far worse. As I saw pro and anti-immigration protesters gathering in Thessaloniki (Greece) I wondered why it was that anyone would intentionally invite potential terrorists, along with the poor and destitute, that an economically failing country could not afford to absorb. The myth that poverty causes terrorism has been debunked time and again, as is clearly evident by the billions of poor folks around the world that never choose the strategy as a viable option. Indeed, even if it were true, it would run counter to one’s own argument to willfully welcome large numbers of poor immigrants who have nothing in common (language, religion, culture, and national experience) with the host country’s inhabitants. Rather, terrorism is caused by those who see fit to employ it as a tool.
At present, terrorism isn’t being used by Swedish Christians, Chinese Buddhists, or Israeli Jews. Everyone knows who is doing it, but too many are afraid to utter the words describing the faction: Islamist Supremacists/Jihadist Ideologues.
Photographic Evidence:
The Gas Stations in Which Refugees Were Readily Observed:
The Scene from the Northern Location:
The Scene from the Southern Location:
Military Age Males Walking Roadside:
Recently, I was cited by Metro News as a terrorism expert. They had asked me to comment on the new terrorism laws that recently passed in the New York State Senate and were headed to the assembly for a vote. The paper did an excellent job of quoting me in context. I thought, however, that I would offer my full sentiments on the matter for which I was contacted. What follows is a more robust and complete statement of my expert opinion on the topic. I hope you enjoy!
I was asked two fundamental questions and my answers were as follows:
These proposed laws seem to serve two important goals. First, some would enable citizens to alert the authorities when it appears that another is engaged in advancing terrorist aims either by inciting violence, or condoning it for terrorism’s sake. Secondly, the bills appear to horizontally extend the impact of laws, which are already on the books, while adapting them to meet the changing threat landscape. Some examples follow.
Extant laws covering larceny and money laundering may cover traditional crimes that center on personal greed, but terrorists seem to be motivated by a different set of incentives. Certainly, traditional crime may involve a cyber component, but crafting legislation to go beyond mere criminality is a responsible means by which to deal with someone who is serving broader terrorist aims. A specific example would be one who steals a credit card and goes online to fraudulently purchase, say, a laptop or pressure cooker, but if it turns out that one has purchased the components of a homemade bomb it is worth having a law that addresses this unique circumstance.
Another example would be grand larceny in the second degree, which is a class C felony. All that is required in this instance is that the value of the sum stolen equals $50,000 or more. Money laundering in support of terrorism in the second degree is already a class C felony and the monetary threshold is merely $25,000; the same charge in the first degree is a class B felony and the threshold in that instance is $125,000. Most of the bills under consideration by the New York State Assembly either propose new, or enhance current, legislation that might result in a C felony conviction. Only one, cyber terrorism, proposes that an A felony be charged and in that instance it deals with mass injury as a result of terrorist activity.
With regard to making a terroristic threat against a police officer, one must bear in mind that offenses, such as assault, are already treated as more serious when they are committed against a law enforcement officer. This specific bill codifies, and increases the penalties for, combining threats that one directs at both civilians and police officers.
Of late, there has been an increase in cases in which Americans with no prior connection to jihadist terror have somehow demonstrated an ability to radicalize rather quickly. Although it is difficult to know if the new laws would deter would-be terrorists, it is important to convey to jihadist aspirants that their nefarious intentions can result in more serious punitive measures.
In order to successfully fight terrorism, both at home and abroad, the law is an important tool for police and prosecutors, but also for civilians determined prevent attacks such as the Boston bombing or San Bernardino combined assault. This proposed legislation enables our frontline law enforcement officers the ability to defend the citizenry, which is their primary function. However, there are some significant gaps in our defenses. Specifically, there is no national database of jihadist identifiers, which enable law enforcement to quickly and accurately connect the dots that would raise suspicion levels to a degree worth pursuing in the criminal realm.
Detecting a genuine jihadist threat is important for law enforcement. So is establishing whether a new threat has emerged and whether it has been detected elsewhere. As a nongovernmental entity, Jihad Intel seeks to provide law enforcement with the ability to ameliorate the natural shortcomings of the law as it is written. It lends assistance to those whose job it is to do the dot-connecting, by serving as an open source clearinghouse for jihadist Symbology. The tool itself may also be used by civilians, who notice something that appears to be associated with terrorism.
Your question specifically asks what approaches and strategy are appropriate. The answer is that laws by themselves are insufficient. A “whole of society” approach is needed. Many crimes are solved when citizens feel comfortable speaking with the police, who then determine whether a criminal or terrorist act is afoot. The private sector can enhance the speed and efficiency of the public sector where budgetary constraints inhibit progress. The bills under consideration do seem to serve a more holistic strategy to combating terrorism.
The Islamic State and al-Qa’ida have specifically called for the targeting of both civilians and the police. In some instances they have been successful. It is wise to adopt legislation that meets the threats emanating from our enemies abroad. A major component of their strategy is to penetrate our society and generate terror from within our borders. The best strategy seeks to neutralize one’s adversary’s strengths. This legislation is a means by which to do so.
David Firester, Ph.D.
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