Michael Morell
The terrorist group
poses a gathering threat
In the aftermath of the attempted terrorist
attack on May 4 in Garland, Texas–for which ISIS claimed responsibility–we find
ourselves again considering the question of whether or not ISIS is a real
threat. The answer is yes. A very serious one.
Extremists inspired by Osama bin Laden’s
ideology consider themselves to be at war with the U.S.; they want to attack
us. It is important to never forget that–no matter how long it has been since
9/11. ISIS is just the latest manifestation of bin Laden’s design. The group
has grown faster than any terrorist group we can remember, and the threat it
poses to us is as wide-ranging as any we have seen.
What ISIS has that al-Qaeda doesn’t is a
Madison Avenue level of sophisticated messaging and social media. ISIS has a
multilingual propaganda arm known as al-Hayat, which uses GoPros and cameras
mounted on drones to make videos that appeal to its followers. And ISIS uses
just about every tool in the platform box–from Twitter to YouTube to
Instagram–to great effect, attracting fighters and funding. Digital media are
one of the group’s most significant strengths; they have helped ISIS become an
organization that poses four significant threats to the U.S.
First, it is a threat to the stability of the
entire Middle East. ISIS is putting the territorial integrity of both Iraq and
Syria at risk. And a further collapse of either or both of these states could
easily spread throughout the region, bringing with it sectarian and religious
strife, humanitarian crises and the violent redrawing of borders, all in a part
of the world that remains critical to U.S. national interests. ISIS now
controls more territory–in Iraq and Syria–than any other terrorist group
anywhere in the world.
When al-Qaeda in Iraq joined the fight in Syria,
the group changed its name to ISIS. ISIS added Syrians and foreign fighters to
its ranks, built its supply of arms and money and gained significant
battlefield experience fighting Bashar Assad’s regime. Together with the
security vacuum in Iraq and Nouri al-Maliki’s alienation of the Sunnis, this
culminated in ISIS’s successful blitzkrieg across western Iraq in the spring
and summer of 2014, when it seized large amounts of territory.
ISIS is not the first extremist group to take
and hold territory. Al-Shabab in Somalia did so a number of years ago and still
holds territory there, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb did so in Mali in 2012,
and al-Qaeda in Yemen did so there at roughly the same time. I fully expect
extremist groups to attempt to take–and sometimes be successful in
taking–territory in the years ahead. But no other group has taken so much
territory so quickly as ISIS has.
Second, ISIS is attracting young men and women
to travel to Syria and Iraq to join its cause. At this writing, at least 20,000
foreign nationals from roughly 90 countries have gone to Syria and Iraq to join
the fight. Most have joined ISIS. This flow of foreigners has outstripped the
flow of such fighters into Iraq during the war there a decade ago. And there
are more foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq today than there were in
Afghanistan in the 1980s working to drive the Soviet Union out of that country.
These foreign nationals are getting experience on the battlefield, and they are
becoming increasingly radicalized to ISIS’s cause.
There is a particular subset of these fighters
to worry about. Somewhere between 3,500 and 5,000 jihadist wannabes have
traveled to Syria and Iraq from Western Europe, Canada, Australia and the U.S.
They all have easy access to the U.S. homeland, which presents two major
concerns: that these fighters will leave the Middle East and either conduct an
attack on their own or conduct an attack at the direction of the ISIS
leadership. The former has already happened in Europe. It has not happened yet
in the U.S.–but it will. In spring 2014, Mehdi Nemmouche, a young Frenchman who
went to fight in Syria, returned to Europe and shot three people at the Jewish
Museum of Belgium in Brussels.
The third threat is that ISIS is building a
following among other extremist groups around the world. The allied exaltation
is happening at a faster pace than al-Qaeda ever enjoyed. It has occurred in
Algeria, Libya, Egypt and Afghanistan. More will follow. These groups, which
are already dangerous, will become even more so. They will increasingly target
ISIS’s enemies (including us), and they will increasingly take on ISIS’s brutality.
We saw the targeting play out in early 2015 when an ISIS-associated group in
Libya killed an American in an attack on a hotel in Tripoli frequented by
diplomats and international businesspeople. And we saw the extreme violence
play out just a few weeks after that when another ISIS-affiliated group in
Libya beheaded 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians.
And fourth, perhaps most insidiously, ISIS’s
message is radicalizing young men and women around the globe who have never
traveled to Syria or Iraq but who want to commit an attack to demonstrate their
solidarity with ISIS. These are the so-called lone wolves. Even before May 4,
such an ISIS-inspired attack had already occurred in the U.S.: an individual
with sympathies for ISIS attacked two New York City police officers with a
hatchet. Al-Qaeda has inspired such U.S. attacks–the Fort Hood shootings in
late 2009 that killed 13 and the Boston Marathon bombing in spring 2013 that
killed five and injured nearly 300. The attempted attack in Texas is just the
latest of these.
We can expect more of these kinds of attacks in
the U. S. Attacks by ISIS-inspired individuals are occurring at a rapid pace
around the world–roughly 10 since ISIS took control of so much territory. Two
such attacks have occurred in Canada, including the October 2014 attack on the
Parliament building. And another occurred in Sydney, in December 2014. Many
planning such attacks–in Australia, Western Europe and the U.S.–have been
arrested before they could carry out their terrorist plans.
Today an ISIS-directed attack in the U. S.
would be relatively unsophisticated (small-scale), but over time ISIS’s
capabilities will grow. This is what a long-term safe haven in Iraq and Syria
would give ISIS, and it is exactly what the group is planning to do. They have
announced their intentions–just like bin Laden did in the years prior to 9/11.
Michael Morell is the former deputy director of the CIA and
has twice served as acting director. He is the author of The Great War of Our Time: The CIA’s Fight Against Terrorism — From al Qa’ida to ISIS.
TIME, May 14,
2015
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário
Não publicamos comentários de anônimos/desconhecidos.
Por favor, se optar por "Anônimo", escreva o seu nome no final do comentário.
Não use CAIXA ALTA, (Não grite!), isto é, não escreva tudo em maiúsculas, escreva normalmente. Obrigado pela sua participação!
Volte sempre!
Abraços./-