DNI Coats told Senators that the Islamic State "very likely will continue to pursue external attacks from Iraq and Syria against regional and Western adversaries, including the United States.” He also said that ISIS will seek to exploit "stretched security forces to regain territory in Iraq and Syria in the long term.”
Understanding the real terrorist threat and the impact that U.S. troop drawdowns will have on those threats is one of the things we discussed with counterterrorism expert Bruce Hoffman, including the question of how to (finally) kill off a withering terrorist organization.
The Cipher Brief: Let's start big picture. What groups pose the largest threat to the U.S. both inside and outside the U.S.?
Hoffman: The usual suspects across the board but with some variations. I don't think the threat from ISIS has gone away, although it may well be, in the case of the United States itself, it's more of an inspirational threat to potential lone wolf attackers. I don't think that's changed and certainly ISIS has been knocked off balance by the loss of its caliphate, the destruction of its state and it's battlefield reversals, but I think it's resiliency was cited by the administration itself in the new National Counterterrorism Strategy that the White House released last September, which describes ISIS as defeated, but at the same time also stated that nonetheless, ISIS still maintains eight branches scattered throughout the world in some two dozen active networks, which suggests that it is still a threat, though a less robust one than when it had its caliphate.
Bruce Hoffman, Counterterrorism Expert and Georgetown Professor
"But in absolutes, the ability of terrorism's power rests in its ability to shock and surprise us. That's the essence of terrorism and I think it's that quest to once again steal some of the thunder of media coverage for themselves and to elbow themselves back into the limelight that terrorists believe a successful attack of any kind brings, even if it's someone just plowing a truck into pedestrians. That's undeniably tragic but fairly unsophisticated."
But that's sufficient to catapult them back into the headlines and to regenerate the fear and anxiety that's the stock and trade of terrorists throughout history. You don't join a terrorist organization to sit on your hands.
The Cipher Brief: So, what about the troop withdrawals? Regardless of the timeline, both in Syria and Afghanistan, how do you see that impacting ISIS’ ability to find a safe haven and regroup and regrow?
Bruce Hoffman, Counterterrorism Expert and Georgetown Professor
"Taking the pressure off of them at a critical moment, which I have to say is not something specific to the Trump administration, I would say, since the war on terrorism began, that's been, unfortunately, a corrosive feature of our counter terrorism strategy is that we precipitously declare victory and ease up on the pressure when these groups are indeed on the verge of collapse, when they have suffered enormous losses."
But our failure in the past to kill them off has not only enabled them to survive, but as we saw with the emergence of ISIS, has enabled even more dangerous splinter groups to emerge, so I would argue we're in a very similar situation now.
The Cipher Brief: How do you kill off a withering terrorist organization?
Hoffman: Well, it'd be one thing if we were talking about maintaining troop levels on par with the height of the Iraq war with 150,000 American troops in Iraq alone and another 100,000 in Afghanistan. But we're not talking about numbers anywhere close to that.
Rather more strategic deployments of special operations and intelligence assets that are absolutely critical for keeping these terrorist groups off balance, but even more so, for enabling our local allies to be as effective as they possibly can in countering these groups so when these capabilities are removed, it's not just that the U.S. is out of the picture, but I think there are two effects.
Firstly, and counterintuitively, it may put more of our troops in harm's way as we see a withdrawal of force protection that leads to our intelligence assets starting to degrade and puts the remainder of our forces there in greater danger. But also, it degrades the ability exactly as that counter terrorism strategy says, to work by, through and with our allies. It undermines their capabilities by diminishing our presence. Even in the case of Turkey, supposedly offering to take the burden from us with fighting in Syria, they were still demanding U.S. air and intelligence assets to support them.
The modest presence of special operations and intelligence personnel, and I wish we could bring every one of the troops home too, but that is an enormous force multiplier in the war against terrorism and in our long-term ability to counter these groups that we're, as I said, very precipitously now removing with, I think potentially dangerous consequences, as we've just seen in the past week.
The Cipher Brief: You bring up a really good point with the use of targeted strategic deployments of those special operations teams. The U.S. has really changed the way it's used special operations forces in the past decade. What do you see as the long-term future for special operations? Are they going to have to go through some kind of permanent change where more teams with particular skill sets are going to continue to be utilized in different locations around the world?
Hoffman: This is, I think, another problem. I think it's easier to maintain an op tempo when you're not constantly ramping up and then throttling down. And the capabilities that we've built up to now have been proven to be successful. I don't think there's any doubt about that but taking them away means that rebuilding them when and if we may need to do so, has enormous transactional costs, and I would argue, puts more pressure on these forces. It also undermines a lot of confidence in the United States. I think it has corrosive effects on the confidence of our allies to continue to prosecute a struggle that after all has dragged on far longer than anyone anticipated it would. The war on terrorism, in one variant or another, dates back to 2001.
The Cipher Brief: Let's talk about other terrorist threats for a moment. What's your sense of whether one or more of the smaller organizations is well positioned to regain strength in the next year?
Hoffman: Al-Shabab is another group that lost tremendous amounts of territory and seemed to be defeated to the point where we thought we could outsource counterterrorism to AMISOM (The African Union Mission in Somalia) for example. When AMISOM had U.S. intelligence and other support, you could actually see its benefits in the fight against al-Shabab as the drawdown in its capabilities duly unfolded, in this peripheral theater in the war on terrorism. That's not to minimize the threat in East Africa, but it is to say that it's not front and center as it's been in Syria or Afghanistan.
Bruce Hoffman, Counterterrorism Expert and Georgetown Professor
"But you can see that al-Shabab was able to flex its muscles and launch its second most consequential international terrorist attack when it struck in Nairobi last week as well, so the fact that when the United States was more actively deployed there and supporting AMISOM, it shows that not only was al-Shabab being weakened, being deprived of territory, but also its logistical capabilities to project terrorist power into surrounding countries was limited, because the leaders were basically concerned about constantly looking over their shoulder and concerned for their own security. As soon as that U.S. support to AMISOM diminished somewhat, al-Shabab began to again think on a much grander scale and start to once again plan and plot terrorist operations."
So that, to me, is very cautionary. In al-Qaeda's case, I would argue that they're much more focused on local conflicts now, especially in Yemen, and in Syria, and in Afghanistan, on consolidating their power there. As I've often said in interviews with The Cipher Brief, I think al-Qaeda is rather contentedly sitting back and watching as ISIS takes all the heat, absorbs all our attention, preoccupies all our resources, creates more political divisions in our societies across the west, exhausts us as the war on terrorism drags on, and so is just biding its time until they deem it propitious to once again reassert itself.
I see that happening in Afghanistan where I don't think there's any separating of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda has clearly been active in Afghanistan, as evidenced over the past three or four years by discoveries of huge arms dumps the group has stockpiled. Not small arsenals or armories, but huge revetments on a model of what bin Laden was doing pre-9/11, both in Shorabak in 2015, and then in Nangarhar in 2017. I don't think those are the only two huge extensive stockpiling of weapons and building of underground tunnel systems that Al-Qaeda was engaged in, which shows that it's still a robust force that is cooperating with and abetting the Taliban. And the Taliban, these days, is amongst the most active terrorist organizations in the world, and Al-Qaeda serves as an important force multiplier for them.
The Cipher Brief: So then, what do you make of the announcement by Zalmay Khalilzad that a framework for a peace deal may be possible?
Hoffman: No, I think it's always desirable to divide your enemies so if there are factions that are willing to discuss peace terms, I think it's always important to engage in those and to pursue these potentialities. If only because if they don't work, you have the perfect justification for continuing to rely on a kinetic solution. But I think we have to enter these talks very cautiously and understand who we're negotiating with and what their agenda is. I was a bit disconcerted back in December when immediately after these talks in the Gulf, the Taliban spokesman made a statement to the effect that, "Of course the foreigners who are with us, they're our guests that we cannot be disrespectful to them. We cannot turn them over to anyone. We have to welcome them. This is part of our culture." And that was exactly the same argument that the Taliban was making about Al-Qaeda before 9/11. As I took it, they're making that argument again, irrespective of the results of these negotiations. So, we risk deluding ourselves if we think that has been or perhaps will or even can be so significant a change in their policy on foreign fighters. It's A range of many different nationalities currently fighting in Afghanistan, siding with Al-Qaeda, that haven’t really turned their back on terrorism.
And also, what about their relationship with groups like the Haqqani network, which is not the Taliban but is clearly may not be an international terrorist organization like Al-Qaeda, but is nonetheless a threat to the stability of South Asia, and certainly a malignant force.
The Cipher Brief: How concerned are you about state-sponsored backers of terrorism utilizing terrorists for hire in other areas around the world, do you expect some growth to that market, if you will?
Hoffman: Less is mercenaries or terrorists for hire, more I think in the realm that we may have a Shia foreign fighter problem, much like over the past 30 years, we've had a Sunni foreign fighter, or Salafi-Jihadi foreign fighter problem because of course, Shia from Yemen, from the Gulf, from Africa, certainly from Pakistan, from Afghanistan have now gone to Syria, have been trained by the Iranian revolutionary guards, by Hezbollah and have acquitted themselves well in battle, and eventually they're going to go home too.
Bruce Hoffman, Counterterrorism Expert and Georgetown Professor
"The question is, "Is this history going to repeat itself and that same phenomena we had in the 1990s with the wandering mujahidin when they were Salafi-Jihadis. What if that also manifests itself with Shia wandering mujahidin in the future?" And that means that the instability in these regions is poised to only intensify rather than diminish with, I think wider global security repercussions."
And especially in some of these countries, whether it's in the Gulf, or whether it's in South Asia, the way the Shia have long been marginalized or oppressed, neglected. The fact that in Pakistan Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is dedicated to eviscerating the Shia presence in Pakistan creates a dynamic where these returning Shi’a foreign fighters themselves will seek vengeance. These foreign fighters going home thus raises the prospect of Yet another round of sectarian violence, even worse of sectarian warfare than we've seen now.
Part in parcel of that, going to your question is that state sponsored terrorism, which at one point we thought was an artifact of the Cold War or an inheritance from when there were these rogue regimes in Libya and in Iraq, and we thought had ended with the 21st century seems to be resurfacing and seems to be thriving in a multitude of guises, whether it's cyber warfare, information operations, little green men. Not just in a Middle Eastern or in a Salafi-Jihadi context. But we see state sponsorship of terrorism becoming much more prominent in finding its way into the doctrine of countries as a form of hybrid warfare.
The Cipher Brief: How about a kind of quick reality check on what you believe the largest terrorist threat is to the U.S. homeland today? I remember probably about a decade ago now, doing a piece for CNN on the Hezbollah sleeper cells that existed here.
Hoffman: Well, that's probably the best news of a very unstable world with no shortage of terrorist threats is that objectively, I think the homeland has never been safer. The agencies in place, the sharing of information, which is much less stove-piped than it ever was, and cooperation with state and local authorities has improved our security. The fact that there's a Department of Homeland Security when there hadn't been on the eve of 9/11, that there's an NCTC, which didn't exist before, that there's been so many reforms is that we're in a much better place than we've ever been. I would say that without any doubt, there's still Iranian sleeper cells in this country. In fact, just recently, the L.A. Times had an article about two suspected Iranian agents that were indicted.
The article said the suspects were surveilling Jewish and other targets in Los Angeles, and that kind of presence, I would argue, is a perennial threat that's been going on for decades. So that hasn't diminished. Iran has no conventional military capability whatsoever, so their hopes of deterring any U.S. action against them should the nuclear agreement totally unravel or punish the United States for any aggressive action against Iran rests with these sleeper cells that I would argue are also needed throughout the world. I think at the moment, neither al-Qaeda nor ISIS really have the kind of terrorist assets in this country to carry out attacks, and they never real did have them. It's been said that they have them in Europe and in other places, so the threat of lone wolf or inspired attacks, I think remains the most salient threat in the U.S., but for at least the time being, the domestic threat is probably more an internal one and may indeed be from extreme right-wing elements perhaps, hate groups. And this, I think is the challenge is we've got ... even five years ago, the intelligence authorities were focused on one target, which is to say al-Qaeda and its manifestations. Now you have intelligence and law enforcement focused not just on al-Qaeda but even more so on ISIS in addition, the Iranian influence threat that we just spoke about and on right-wing hate groups.
Bruce Hoffman, Counterterrorism Expert and Georgetown Professor
"This, I think has been really borne out very clearly in the United Kingdom, which to me, has often been the canary in the coal mine for terrorist threats, the 2005 London attacks, presaged plots like the 2009 Najibullah Zazi plot, and so on."
And in the United Kingdom, they have something like 700 ongoing terrorist investigations. And when you talk to the FBI in this country, proportionally they have a very large number as well. So, the authorities are doing an enormously effective job. In Britain, they've prevented 18 terrorist attacks over the past two years, but it's interesting. That's an average of nine attacks per year. In the previous four years from 2013 to 2017, it was an average of about seven plots a year they were preventing. Now that's gone up a bit, but in addition to Salafi-Jihadi plots that account for 14 of the 18 aborted attacks over the past two years, a rising threat come from the extreme right wing in Britain who are responsible for four. So, there's no slackening of the pressure on law enforcement and intelligence to remain abreast of an ever-broadening array of threats than that existed just a few years ago.
We'd like to think that most phenomena in the world, terrorism is linear, but it's not, and it's precisely that capacity to surprise or the shock that breathes life into terrorist organization. So, we shouldn't be misled by lulls in terrorist activity and become overly complacent because even a temporary lack of capability is not necessarily reflective of an absence of intent. And that intent over time can recreate that capability.
Read also The Next Terrorist Threat….
