Our radicalism problem is local
Tweeting in the wake of Tuesday’s vehicular terrorist attack in Manhattan, President Trump quickly pointed to his preferred counterterrorism plan: border security. “We must not allow ISIS to return, or enter, our country after defeating them in the Middle East and elsewhere. Enough!”
Forget the fact that Uzbekistan does not appear in any of the President’s various iterations of the travel ban. The problem is that the kind of terrorism New York just suffered has nothing to do with border security.
The most pressing terrorism threat facing American communities today is local, not foreign. The solutions must be local, too.
The suspect behind the attack, Sayfullo Saipov, emigrated to the U.S. legally from Uzbekistan in 2010. While the investigation is in its early stages, Gov. Cuomo said that early evidence suggests it was only after Saipov arrived in the U.S. that he demonstrated any interest in ISIS or terrorism. Saipov was not previously known to the FBI or NYPD, nor was he on any government watch lists.
According to a March 2017 federal Homeland Security Department report, “most foreign-born, U.S.-based violent extremists likely radicalized several years after their entry to the United States.” The department’s findings echo a December 2016 report by the House Homeland Security Committee, which concluded “the United States faces its highest Islamist terror threat environment since 9/11, and much of the threat now stems from individuals who have been radicalized at home.”
Today’s most immediate threats are mostly from homegrown, violent extremists who act in small groups or as lone offenders. Simply stopping people from certain countries from entering the U.S. does not address the problem. Even the strictest immigration policies fail to address this issue, because radicalization happens here.
To make matters worse, authorities have long warned of the likelihood of vehicular attacks in the U.S. In December 2010, the FBI and the Homeland Security Department co-authored a report warning of “ramming attacks” and the ease with which a truck could be rented for such a purpose, as apparently happened Tuesday in New York. Al Qaeda’s Inspire magazine recommended wannabe jihadists consider car rammings as a particularly effec- tive terrorist tactic. There is no such thing as 100% success in the counterterrorism world, even when authorities know to expect certain types of attacks.
The good news is we are not without effective responses to homegrown violent extremism. The Homeland Security Department report concluded radicalization trends in the U.S. present opportunities for tailored programs to counter violent extremism. A bipartisan report from the Washington Institute also identified local communities as being “on the front lines of defense against homegrown violent extremism.”
Getting ahead of the curve requires a strategy that empowers communities and builds trusting partnerships with and within local communities to prevent and counter violent extremism.
But here, too, the Trump administration shows signs its counterterrorism approach is behind the times. Homeland Security Department officials have indicated they now prefer to reframe efforts to counter violent extremism as “terrorism prevention.” But it is not at all clear the kind of local, community-based programs that can effectively counter extremism here in the homeland would be included in this new, more muscular but likely less effective framing.
Trump said Wednesday that the U.S. must have a criminal justice system with “punishment that’s far quicker and far greater than the punishment these animals are getting right now. They’ll go through court for years. . . . We need quick justice, and we need strong justice.” Furthermore, the President said that he would consider sending Saipov to Guantanamo Bay.
In reality, the few successful terrorism convictions that have been secured through the enemy combatant prosecution system at Guantanamo Bay have been plea bargains, whereas prosecutors have a tremendously impressive track record for convicting terrorists in criminal courts. There is no added benefit of putting a man who drives a truck into a crowd on a pedestal and treating him as a special case. Rather, Saipov should be tried in a criminal court as the terrorist and murderer he is, upholding the U.S. rule of law as a model for the rest of the world.