What Can Be Done?

The territorial collapse of ISIS in Syria and Iraq and the resultant degradation of its external attack capabilities provide the West with breathing room in its confrontation with terrorism. However, the larger jihadist movement remains strong, and the terrorist threat remains persistent and in flux. Policymakers should take the opportunity provided by the receding threat from ISIS to debate and develop counterterrorism strategies that address the new threat environment rather than resting on their laurels until a new group, or a resurgent ISIS or al-Qaeda, once again succeeds in directing a major attack in the West.

Here are some ideas about what should be done:

• The president and his National Security Council should release a public counterterrorism strategy. While the Trump administration has released a general National Security Strategy, it has not yet released a specific statement of its strategy for counterterrorism. As New America fellow and former NSC senior director for counterterrorism Joshua Geltzer and Center for a New American Security adjunct senior fellow Stephen Tankel argue, “While one can surmise the basic aspects of Trump’s approach to counterterrorism and identify potential pitfalls ahead, the absence of an official, reviewable strategy makes matters worse.”¹ Releasing an official strategy document would go a long way toward both clarifying the Trump administration’s policies and enabling a much-needed public debate on how best to counter terrorism in a sustainable manner.
• The United States should conduct an assessment and audit of the amount of money spent on counterterrorism efforts since the 9/11 attacks. One of the core stated objectives of al-Qaeda was to drain U.S. resources. That there is no official accounting of the money spent — according to the Stimson Center, it may be as high as 15 percent of discretionary spending — is extremely concerning, given the strategic implications of waste and the potential that any savings could be applied to more critical issues.²
• Congress should debate and pass a new Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). The United States currently relies on a 17-year-old authorization — along with claims of imminent threat — for the legal basis of its counterterrorism operations. The threat the United States faces today is substantially transformed from what the 2001 AUMF was designed to respond to. There are real questions as to whether a group like ISIS, which split off from al-Qaeda and waged war against it, can be covered accurately under the 2001 AUMF. These problems are likely to increase further as the years pass.
• The White House should draft and publicly release a report detailing the Trump administration’s policies regarding counterterrorism strikes similar to the Presidential Policy Guidance released by the Obama administration in 2016. The Trump administration has reportedly made numerous substantial policy changes to the processes regarding counterterrorism strikes. Yet the administration has not released information on these changes, representing a step backward for transparency since the end of the Obama administration. Having a transparent accounting of when, why and how the United States conducts counterterrorism strikes abroad is necessary for policymakers and the public to be able to assess the weighty strategic and moral questions involved in the United States’ continuing counterterrorism wars.
• The Pentagon should provide a public accounting of the countries where the United States is conducting counterterrorism operations and better communicate the existence and role of such operations to legislators and the public. Congress should uphold its responsibility to pay attention to where and why the U.S. is engaged in military action. On October 4, 2017, ISIS in the Greater Sahara ambushed U.S. forces operating in Niger, killing four Americans.³ Following the ambush, key U.S. senators expressed surprise regarding the extent of American military involvement in Niger.⁴ Senator Lindsey Graham stated, “I didn’t know there was 1,000 troops in Niger,” adding, “We don’t know exactly where we’re at in the world, militarily, and what we’re doing.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer also said he did not know about the presence of U.S. troops in Niger. While such statements must be taken with a grain of salt, as the Pentagon said it did indeed brief lawmakers on the U.S. presence and other representatives confirmed that they knew about the presence, the claims of ignorance reveal a lack of sustained oversight and a failure of many in Congress to fulfill their duty to oversee American military action.

  At the same time, the Pentagon must provide, to the extent possible, accurate and public data on where U.S. troops are operating. In December 2017, the Pentagon announced that there were 2,000 U.S. troops deployed in Syria — four times the largest previously released count, even though the number had been declining for months.⁵ The announcement came as a result of a review initiated by Defense Secretary James Mattis of substantial discrepancies between public and actual troop numbers.⁶ The Pentagon should make a greater effort to provide an accurate picture of where and how American forces are operating. That key congressional representatives, let alone the public, claim ignorance on these questions is a failure of communication as well as a failure of Congress to exercise oversight.

• Congress should expand oversight of American counterterrorism strikes and the Pentagon should expand protections against civilian casualties. A deep, on-the-ground investigation into American counter-ISIS airstrikes in Iraq by New America fellows Azmat Khan and Anand Gopal “found that one in five of the coalition strikes we identified resulted in civilian death, a rate more than 31 times that acknowledged by the coalition.”⁷ The investigation found that in addition, many of the strikes that caused civilian deaths were the product of incorrect intelligence. The investigation has resulted in calls for greater oversight and review of the targeting process. In the New York Times, Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont wrote, “These are solvable problems. … This should start with the secretary of defense immediately commissioning a team of experts, including military and intelligence officers and representatives of organizations like the Center for Civilians in Conflict, which has extensive experience in documenting civilian casualties. This team should conduct a comprehensive analysis of every aspect of the current procedures for identifying and verifying potential targets and make recommendations for improvement.”⁸ Leahy has also called for greater disbursement of funds for condolence payments to families of civilians killed by American airstrikes, which until the aforementioned investigation had not been disbursed in a single case of an anti-ISIS strike, and greater transparency regarding the conduct of strikes. All of these recommendations should be pursued by the Pentagon.
• The United States should seek to deescalate conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa. Al-Qaeda, ISIS and other jihadist groups have drawn upon the escalation of conflict in the Middle East — whether the sectarian civil war that followed the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the chaos that followed the fall of Libyan leader Muammar Ghaddafi, or ISIS’ rise amid the Syrian civil war — to fuel their recruitment and expansion. While the escalation of conflict in the Middle East is driven by a number of factors, not all of which the United States can influence, and while there may be cases where military action is required, in general the United States should strenuously seek to avoid initiating new conflicts or escalating ongoing ones while simultaneously seeking to bring ongoing conflicts to an end.
• The president should end the travel ban. As described earlier in this report, the travel ban would not have prevented a single deadly attack inside the United States since 9/11, or the 9/11 attacks themselves. It is too broad a tool that simultaneously reflects a misunderstanding of the homegrown nature of the threat faced by the United States. Moreover, its promulgation has disrupted relationships and partnerships that play important roles in the U.S. counterterrorism effort. For example, the inclusion of Chad reportedly strained U.S. relations with an important partner in the effort against Boko Haram, perhaps contributing to Chad’s decision to withdraw troops from the fight against the terrorist group in Niger.⁹ The initial inclusion of Iraq as part of the travel ban also strained relations in the midst of counter-ISIS operations.¹⁰ Furthermore, the ban strains the U.S. government’s relations with American Muslim communities.
• The U.S. government should build trust with rather than alienate Muslim communities. The past few years have brought a marked increase in tension between American Muslim communities and the government. In particular, 2016 and 2017 were characterized by an increase in anti-Muslim political activity, driven in large part by the adoption of anti-Muslim messages by political campaigns — most notably that of Donald Trump, according to data collected by New America’s Muslim Diaspora Initiative.¹¹ For example, the Trump administration implemented a travel ban modeled on Trump’s campaign calls for a Muslim ban. These new strains build upon earlier tensions over the role and nature of surveillance and other U.S. policies in the war on terrorism.

  The new tension has already demonstrated an impact on U.S. counterterrorism efforts. The Minneapolis Somali nonprofit Ka Joog declined a $500,000 grant from a federal Countering Violent Extremism program, explicitly citing “an unofficial war on Muslim Americans” by the Trump administration.¹² While the merits of particular Countering Violent Extremism programs are certainly up for debate, such refusals illustrate the expanding distrust and hesitancy to partner with the government and reflect a larger challenge to partnerships.

  Good relations and partnerships between American Muslim communities and the government can play a key role in countering jihadist terrorism. At the 2018 Aspen Security Forum, FBI Director Christopher Wray emphasized the importance of trust, stating, “There’s almost always a neighbor, a family member, a friend, a coworker, somebody who observed that [the process of radicalization], and we need to be in a situation where people trust us enough to, as you say, see something, say something.”¹³ In an ongoing study of some 80 terrorism cases in the U.S. since 2009, the FBI found that leakage — the revelation of details about impending acts — happened more than 80 percent of the time.¹⁴ Those to whom information was leaked, termed “bystanders,” were broken down by the FBI into peers, family members, authority figures and strangers. FBI analysts found an average of three bystanders per case, and in one case as many as 14. Some bystanders saw radicalization behavior. Others saw actual plotting and planning, such as the accumulation of weapons, self-educating about how to make explosives or preparations to travel overseas for terrorist training. Analysts graphed out the bystanders who were most likely to come forward with information versus those least likely to do so. Peers were aware of the most concerning information, but they were the least likely to volunteer it. Family members were often aware of both radicalization and planning, but they came forward less often than authority figures such as college professors, supervisors, military commanders or clerics. These figures were reasonably likely to offer information but were more aware of a suspect’s radical sympathies than of any actual plotting. Strangers were the most likely to come forward, which can be helpful. However, they made up only 5 percent of the bystanders with useful information about a suspect. The lesson of the FBI study of terrorism cases is that the most useful information comes from peers and family members. As a result, policies and rhetoric that undermine trust between Muslim (and other) communities and the government risk harming counterterrorism efforts.

• The United States should relentlessly hammer home the message that while ISIS has positioned itself as the defender of Muslims, its victims are overwhelmingly Muslim. U.S. officials should support efforts to catalogue the extent of ISIS’ crimes and governance failures.
• The United States should conduct a review and assessment of alternatives to prison time for convicted jihadists, efforts to prevent radicalization in prison, and the state of preparations for release for those convicted of terrorism-related crimes. As many extremists begin to be released from prison, and with an unprecedented number of terrorism cases in recent years — in large part due to the rise of ISIS — a review and reconsideration of the approach to incarceration of terrorists is needed. This issue is compounded by several terrorism investigations involving children, for whom the imposition of long prison sentences raises significant moral issues.