Emergence of violent Islamist groups in U.S. aided by Internet

The
violent Islamist terrorist threat has evolved and expanded since al Qaeda
planned the 9/11 attacks, and radicalization of disaffected Muslims and recent
converts to Islam is increasingly occurring here in the United States. Yet the federal government has
“no cohesive and comprehensive outreach and communications strategy in
place to confront this thread.” Government Executive Katherine McIntire Peters reports that those are among the findings of a new report by the staff of the Senate
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The report, “Violent Islamist Extremism, the Internet and the
Homegrown Terrorist Threat,” is the first in a series of
reports to be issued jointly by the majority and minority staff and is notable
for its bipartisan conclusions. The report points out that both Director of
National Intelligence Mike McConnell and FBI director Robert Mueller testified
about the growing threat of homegrown extremists in February before the Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence. According to McConnell, evidence suggested
the radical and violent segment of the Muslim population in the West was
growing, although the cells detected thus far in the United States have been less sophisticated than
those in Europe or elsewhere overseas. Through
Internet connections, however, these groups were bound to become more
sophisticated and capable without having to travel overseas for training, he
 said.

The study
examines al Qaeda’s online media operation and identifies four highly
sophisticated production centers that use cutting-edge technology to produce a
range of products, including online magazines, official statements, news
updates, white papers and even poetry. Once content is created by one of the
production centers, it is funneled to a clearinghouse before it is posted on
the Internet. “One of the most active Internet clearinghouses today is the
al-Fajr Media Center, which was established in January 2006. Like the production
centers, al-Fajr is almost entirely virtual. The approval process for
dissemination is unclear, but once approved, content is moved from al-Fajr to
preapproved Web sites. On a daily basis, al-Fajr issues a host of material,
including statements from violent Islamist groups taking credit for attacks in Iraq, Afghanistan, Algeria and elsewhere,” the report
stated. The clearinghouses perform two key functions: They ensure the
authenticity of the message, which is essential to maintaining the movement’s
strict interpretation of Islam and its long-term goal to destroy the West; and
they facilitate the near-instantaneous dissemination of new propaganda,
according to the report. “The propaganda regularly produced by this
process finds its way to literally thousands of violent Islamist Web
sites across the Internet, many of which are either ‘mirrored’ versions of one
another, or ‘simply bulletin boards’ that disseminate the same material created
by the production houses,” the report said.

Charles
Allen, chief intelligence officer and undersecretary for intelligence and
analysis at DHS, said in a 6 May speech at the Washington
Institute for Near East Policy that al Qaeda “has ratcheted up the speed
and accuracy of translated statements openly marketed to U.S. and English-speaking
audiences.” Al Qaeda’s objective, Allen said, “is to gain wide Muslim
support, empathy, financing and future recruits.” The growing
sophistication of al Qaeda’s Internet campaign poses a serious threat and has
the potential to erode the U.S. cultural and community
characteristics (especially the integration of Muslims into American society)
that have thus far discouraged violent radicalization. Left unchallenged, al
Qaeda’s message espoused over the Internet will drive more individuals in the United States through the radicalization
process and encourage them to conduct actual attacks, the Senate committee
report noted. Nonetheless, testimony the committee received showed that,
“no federal agency has been tasked with developing or implementing a
domestic communications strategy.”

Peters
writes that perhaps the most significant outreach effort has come from DHS
Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, which meets regularly with
religious and ethnic community leaders in five major cities and tries to
address the concerns of participants. Yet the effort is not part of a
government-wide outreach effort, nor does the office coordinate with the FBI,
which has substantial contact with communities throughout the country via its fifty-six
field offices. Neither the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties office’s program
nor the FBI’s own outreach program is designed to counter violent Islamist
ideology. “Efforts that rely on relatively uncoordinated outreach to
American-Muslim communities and fragmented communications strategies must be
improved. Indeed, the most credible voices in isolating and rejecting violent
Islamist ideology are those of Muslim community leaders, religious leaders and
other nongovernmental actors who must play a more visible and vocal role in
discrediting and providing alternatives to violent Islamist ideology,” the
committee concluded.