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• Introduction

Definitions of terrorism

• Types of terrorism

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• Social Sci LibreTexts - Terrorism
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Terrorism
• Cornell Law Scholl - Legal Information Institute - Terrorism
• United States Institute of Peace - Rethinking the "War of Terror"
• FBI - Terrorism
• PBS Frontline - The Evolution Of Islamic Terrorism
• Digital History - Terrorism in Historical Perspective
• terrorism - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11)
• terrorism - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
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terrorism , the calculated use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective. Terrorism has been practiced by political organizations with both rightist and leftist objectives, by nationalistic and religious groups, by revolutionaries, and even by state institutions such as armies, intelligence services, and police.

Definitions of terrorism are usually complex and controversial, and, because of the inherent ferocity and violence of terrorism, the term in its popular usage has developed an intense stigma. It was first coined in the 1790s to refer to the terror used during the French Revolution by the revolutionaries against their opponents. The Jacobin party of Maximilien Robespierre carried out a Reign of Terror involving mass executions by the guillotine . Although terrorism in this usage implies an act of violence by a state against its domestic enemies, since the 20th century the term has been applied most frequently to violence aimed, either directly or indirectly, at governments in an effort to influence policy or topple an existing regime .

Terrorism is not legally defined in all jurisdictions; the statutes that do exist, however, generally share some common elements. Terrorism involves the use or threat of violence and seeks to create fear, not just within the direct victims but among a wide audience. The degree to which it relies on fear distinguishes terrorism from both conventional and guerrilla warfare . Although conventional military forces invariably engage in psychological warfare against the enemy, their principal means of victory is strength of arms. Similarly, guerrilla forces, which often rely on acts of terror and other forms of propaganda , aim at military victory and occasionally succeed (e.g., the Viet Cong in Vietnam and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia). Terrorism proper is thus the calculated use of violence to generate fear, and thereby to achieve political goals, when direct military victory is not possible. This has led some social scientists to refer to guerrilla warfare as the “weapon of the weak” and terrorism as the “weapon of the weakest.”

In order to attract and maintain the publicity necessary to generate widespread fear, terrorists must engage in increasingly dramatic, violent, and high-profile attacks. These have included hijackings , hostage takings, kidnappings , mass shootings, car bombings, and, frequently, suicide bombings . Although apparently random, the victims and locations of terrorist attacks often are carefully selected for their shock value. Schools, shopping centres, bus and train stations, and restaurants and nightclubs have been targeted both because they attract large crowds and because they are places with which members of the civilian population are familiar and in which they feel at ease. The goal of terrorism generally is to destroy the public’s sense of security in the places most familiar to them. Major targets sometimes also include buildings or other locations that are important economic or political symbols, such as embassies or military installations. The hope of the terrorist is that the sense of terror these acts engender will induce the population to pressure political leaders toward a specific political end.

Some definitions treat all acts of terrorism, regardless of their political motivations, as simple criminal activity. For example, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) defines both international and domestic terrorism as involving “violent, criminal acts.” The element of criminality, however, is problematic, because it does not distinguish among different political and legal systems and thus cannot account for cases in which violent attacks against a government may be legitimate . A frequently mentioned example is the African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa , which committed violent actions against that country’s apartheid government but commanded broad sympathy throughout the world. Another example is the Resistance movement against the Nazi occupation of France during World War II .

Since the 20th century, ideology and political opportunism have led a number of countries to engage in international terrorism, often under the guise of supporting movements of national liberation. (Hence, it became a common saying that “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”) The distinction between terrorism and other forms of political violence became blurred—particularly as many guerrilla groups often employed terrorist tactics—and issues of jurisdiction and legality were similarly obscured.

These problems have led some social scientists to adopt a definition of terrorism based not on criminality but on the fact that the victims of terrorist violence are most often innocent civilians. Even this definition is flexible, however, and on occasion it has been expanded to include various other factors, such as that terrorist acts are clandestine or surreptitious and that terrorist acts are intended to create an overwhelming sense of fear.

In the late 20th century, the term ecoterrorism was used to describe acts of environmental destruction committed in order to further a political goal or as an act of war, such as the burning of Kuwaiti oil wells by the Iraqi army during the Persian Gulf War . The term also was applied to certain environmentally benign though criminal acts, such as the spiking of lumber trees, intended to disrupt or prevent activities allegedly harmful to the environment .

Since the early 21st the term stochastic terrorism has been used to designate the repeated use of hate speech or other vilifying, dehumanizing rhetoric by a political leader or other public figure that inspires one or more of the figure’s supporters to commit hate crimes or other acts of violence against a targeted person, group, or community . Because stochastic terrorists do not supply their followers with any detailed plan of attack, the particular time and place of the eventual violence are unpredictable.

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The Changing Threat Landscape of Terrorism and Violent Extremism: Implications for Research and Policy

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This panel will provide an overview of the current terrorist threat landscape, how it has changed in the last five to ten years, and strategies to best address this threat at the local and national levels. Emphasis will be placed on how several key events in 2021 have shaped the way we think about research and policy in the fields of radicalization and extremism. Panelists will provide data on fluctuations of the most imminent terrorist threats posed to the U.S. over the last 10 years, why and how possible changes to the threat landscape have taken place, and ways in which the current terrorist threat should be combatted.

DARYL FOX: Good afternoon, everyone. And welcome to today's webinar, "The Changing Threat Landscape of Terrorism and Violent Extremism," hosted by the National Institute of Justice. Important notification about today's webinar, the opinions, findings, and conclusions, or recommendations expressed here are those of the presenters and do not necessarily reflect the positions or policies of the National Institute of Justice of the U.S. Department of Justice. At this time, it's my distinct pleasure to introduce Aisha Qureshi, social science analyst within the National Institute of Justice for some welcoming remarks. Aisha?

AISHA QURESHI: Hi, thanks so much, Daryl, and thanks to everyone for joining us today. As Daryl said, my name's Aisha Qureshi, and I'm one of the social science analysts in the research and evaluation division here at NIJ managing the domestic radicalization and violent extremism portfolio. It's my honor to start off this event and welcome everyone to today's research for the real world which is a long-standing NIJ seminar series that features research that is changing our thinking about policies and practices.

Today's seminar is focused on the current terrorist threat landscape, how it has changed in recent years, and strategies to best address this threat at the local and the national levels. We've got an excellent lineup for speakers today for you who will be introduced just momentarily. They are researchers and experts who have made significant and very impactful contributions to the field of radicalization and extremism studies. We're incredibly grateful that they've joined us today to share their knowledge with us at a time where perhaps it's most critically needed to navigate a new and existing challenges being faced by the field at large. So much has happened in the space even just within the last year, so many historical events and of course the release of the new national strategy for countering domestic terrorism.

To guide us through this very critical conversation, Dr. Matthew Levitt, who is the director of the Reinhard Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy will be moderating today's discussion. Dr. Levitt brings with him a wealth of experience and a very unique perspective as he engages our other experts today and takes questions for you—from you all in the audience. Again, I'd like to thank all of you so much for joining and I hope that you all find this seminar to be beneficial in your respective lines of work. So without any further ado, I'll turn it over to Dr. Levitt.

MATTHEW LEVITT: Thank you very much, Aisha. It's a real pleasure to be able to moderate today's NIJ webinar research for the real world. You're in for a treat. As your heard, I direct a program in counterterrorism at a think tank in Washington called Washington Institute for Near East Policy. And I'm a professor in Georgetown University. My connection to this really is that I run a working group on preventing and countering violent extremism with academics, practitioners, and government officials from around the world. And I'm very involved in the space and I'm very familiar with some of the speakers you're going to hear from today. Today we have a really great program, you're going to hear some introductory remarks, then you'll hear from excellent panelists who are either themselves NIJ grantees and/or experts in the field. We will have ample time for Q&A from the audience. I do want to ask you in advance and I'll remind you later that any questions you have, you are welcome to put them into the Q&A function, which you should find on the right-hand side of your screen. Please try to remember to ask questions in the Q&A function as opposed to the chat function. In the chat function, they might get lost. Let me introduce Chris Tillery who's the director of the Office of Research Evaluation and Technology at the National Institute of Justice. Chris, the floor is yours.

CHRIS TILLERY: Thank you, Matthew. Good afternoon. I want to thank you all for being here today and in particular I want to thank our moderator Matthew Levitt and our distinguished panel of experts for their participation in today's discussion on this important and timely topic.

NIJ has been involved in research to combat terrorism since the late 1990s with the passing of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, subsequent to the Oklahoma City bombing. The focus of that initial effort was on but not limited to homegrown violent extremism. Since 2012, NIJ at the request of Congress, has sustained a program of research to develop a better understanding of the domestic radicalization phenomena and advanced evidence-based strategies for effective intervention and prevention. NIJ now has 50 studies that shed light on questions about a variety of subtopics including the drivers of radicalization, the role of the internet and the social media play in the radicalization process, comparisons of terrorism to other forms of mass violence and what works and what doesn't work when it comes to prevention and intervention programming. In the most recent FY21 solicitation, NIJ called for applications that sought to address three primary objectives. To conduct research to inform terrorism prevention efforts, conventional research in the area, to conduct research on the reintegration of formally-incarcerated individuals being released from terrorism-related charges back into the community, and to evaluate programs and practices to prevent terrorism.

Last year, for the first time since the program's inception, Congress directed a portion of our funding to research white supremacist radicalization and terrorism. A total of eight grants were awarded, many of which included but were not limited to the study of domestic terrorist ideologies. NIJ has always been committed to funding research that studies radicalization to all forms of extremism regardless of its ideological basis. As this seminar will highlight while FY 2021 may have been the first year in which NIJ was directed to conduct research on white supremacist radicalization, it was not the first year in which NIJ funded research examine this topic. In FY 2022, this year, we'll be paying special attention to applications focusing on white supremacy and utilizing the funds specified for this particular form of extremism accordingly in our solicitations. NIJ remains fully committed to advancing the science that addresses our most pressing research needs and the most pervasive threats to our country at any given time. I will now return the seminar to Matthew.

MATTHEW LEVITT: Thank you, Chris. Let's now transition to our slideshow and allow me to introduce your first panelist, William Braniff. Bill Braniff is the director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism or START at the University of Maryland. He previously served as the director of practitioner education at West Point's Combating Terrorism Center and he will introduce START and provide an overview of the current terrorist threat in the United States. Bill, thanks for being with us, the floor is yours.

WILLIAM BRANIFF: Thank you, Matt. And on behalf of all the panelists, I just want to thank NIJ for hosting us all today. So I have the privilege of representing START, which is a 17-year-old research center primarily utilizing the behavioral and social sciences. It's based at the University of Maryland, but we've had the pleasure of working with many researchers from around the country over the last 17 years. We got our start as a Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence. But over the years, we've really diversified our funding streams as well as our portfolio. So now we're spending as much time and energy looking at asymmetric threats beyond terrorism as we do spend on terrorism responses to terrorism. And I think that's actually quite relevant for the conversation today as we get into it. As Matt suggested, I've been asked to do kind of a scene-setter, cover the waterfront, and it's a broad waterfront. So I'm going to just drive right in, please. If we can go to the next slide.

START has been incredibly fortunate to receive a lot of support from NIJ dating back to our work in 2013 to create the PIRUS dataset, the largest dataset in the country on the individual perpetrators of extremist crime. And then since then we've been able to build on PIRUS looking at things like the disengagement, desistance, and deradicalization of violent extremists. Looking at the perpetrators of hate crime with our bias dataset. And then extending PIRUS in other ways, including two datasets which will culminate this year and be made public, one on the perpetrators social networks, and another on their failed and foiled unsuccessful plots. You'll notice on this slide that my name is not here, so I'm honored to be representing Mike Jensen, Lizzy Yates, Shihan Cane, Garry LaFree, and other collaborators from START with you today. Slide, please.

Now I want to start by putting some illustrative numbers to a phenomenon that I think many of us are observing. In this particular slide, I'm representing Dr. Aaron Miller and the Global Terrorism Database team. Now, this slide is not portraying a count of attacks. This is a count of the number of different sub-ideologies and named groups or movements that are motivating terrorist attacks in the United States in the last decade when compared to the one prior. From an ideological standpoint, terrorism and especially domestic terrorism is morphing incredibly rapidly in the United States, and in dangerous ways. I'm going to spend a little time on this slide.

The first implication of the increasing diversity of extremism is that the typologies used by government cannot be static or they will fail to capture emergent ideological strands that are motivating violence. This underscores the importance of longitudinal data collection that is agnostic as to the specific motivation in question. But that's instead based on inclusion criteria focused on perpetrator behavior. And only when the perpetrator's behavior meets an inclusion criteria then do we look at motivations as a second order of business. This allows us to capture the new and emergent kinds of ideologically-motivated criminals in the U.S. The second implication, misogyny is appearing more overtly across the ideological spectrum. But unless misogyny is recognized as an important ideological driver, misogyny may met—make acts of violent extremism look like more commonplace acts of interpersonal violence. We have to take the misogyny seriously as we study this threat. A third implication, increasing xenophobia among U.S. white supremacists means that to a much greater extent than in the past, U.S. and European white supremacists are now seeing eye-to-eye and they have greater reason to travel back and forth to coordinate, or at a minimum to reinforce one another's propaganda. A fourth implication, self-described right-wing terrorists are increasingly engaging in both mass casualty plots and more revolutionary, versus reactionary rhetoric, calling for the overthrow of the government. This invites hostile foreign influence operations. Fifth, while conspiracies have always been a part of violent extremist ideologies in the United States, the torrents of mis- and disinformation have amplified the role of conspiracy theories. So the extent that we're seeing mass radicalization around issues like vaccines and elections, that mass radicalization is happening on the backs of conspiracy theories. Most alarmingly, to me, in a two-party democracy, we are seeing increasingly and explicitly partisan terrorism in the United States. In which violence against the opposing political party or in favor of one's own is seen as legitimate and even necessary. Again, this invites hostile foreign influence operations. Slide, please.

Of course we can also plot the numbers of attacks by ideology, and our data, like other sources, bear out that the most significant trend line over the last decade is the increasing frequency of right-wing terrorism in the United States and among right-wing extremism, white supremacy. I should note that we have secured funding for the Global Terrorism Database after a hiatus, and we're currently through about quarter three in 2020, we'll be updating our analysis accordingly. So I apologize if these appear out-of-date. We actually are catching up, so bear with us. Slide, please.

And here in this slide, in relative percentages, we see the motivation of perpetrators of hate crime broken down by ideology. This is from the bias dataset, which is the first and largest of its kind of a sample on the perpetrators of hate crime. Anti-African-African violence remains the most common motivation. But we see a significant increase by percentages of anti-Hispanic motivation, and this really coincided with the militant and political rhetoric about Latin-American immigrants as invaders starting in about 2016. So that's perhaps the biggest percentage change within the graph. While anti-Semitic motivations are not the most frequent, Jewish targets make up the plurality of mass casualty attacks in the United States. So if we dig into the data, we can see other trend lines that aren’t really presented on this slide. Anti-gender and sexual identity motivations command a significant percentage of those motivations here, maybe 20 percent. In total, white and male supremacist motivations therefore make up about 90 percent of the motivations of hate crime perpetrators in the United States. When you factor in the fact that there are about 9,000 hate crimes in a given year in the United States, like, orders of magnitude more common than there are acts of terrorism about 60 to 70 terrorist attacks in a given year in the United States.

The idea that we would allocate resources to address ideologically-motivated violence and not factor in hate crimes is absolutely irrational. So in terms of implications, while we're very pleased to see that hate crimes were referenced in the congressionally-mandated ODNI, FBI, DHS report on the state of domestic terrorism, as well as in the recent Department of Defense counter extremism activity working group report, the U.S. government really needs to more formally incorporate hate crime into its threat assessments if we're going to drive rational resource allocation. The overlap between terrorism and hate crime, especially the blurring of these phenomenon in online spaces, and the fact that hate crimes can have the same psychological and political impact on our broader society than an act of terrorism may, we really need to treat these threats on par instead of relegating hate crime to some sort of local issue which is what we've done in the past. Slide, please.

In terms of trends regarding tactics, one story over the 2010s has been the continued preference for incendiary devices in the United States which I think is a surprise to many because these attacks don't grab the headlines. One very simple implication is that our fire services are wildly underrepresented on our JTTFs around the country. They're just not a part of them by and large. I think that's a mistake. A second story in these data is the increasing use of firearms over this past decade. Slide, please.

Now here on the first two columns of data which are about the United States, you see that firearms are responsible for 88 percent of the fatalities due to terrorism over this past decade, while they're only used in about 30 percent of the attacks. The implication is that much of the target hardening that we do under the guise of antiterrorism is only able to address a small minority of the fatalities due to terrorism if we don't address the gun issue. I know many of us are focusing on things like vehicles being used as contact weapons, it's attention-grabbing, sometimes those attacks do produce a high number of fatalities. But if we want to address 88 percent of the—of the problem when it comes to fatalities in the United States due to terrorism and we don't address the gun issue, we're fooling ourselves, frankly. Slide, please.

I know that many of us are interested in the responses to terrorism. Specifically, how should we be addressing domestic terrorism given its increasing prioritization. Through 2018, domestic terrorist plots that were intended to kill or injure someone succeeded over 68 percent of the time, right? Compared with about 23 and a half percent of violent plots conducted by international terrorists, right? The implication here is that our current posture for domestic terrorism fails more often than it succeeds. But it remains to be seen if that 60-plus percent success rate has been due to a lack of political will, a lack of resources, a lack of training or legal tools. It's likely a combination of all of the above. So that's a—that's a big topic of discussion, we're not going to address that in this—my short panel. But, what I do want to stress here is the absolutely hypocritical posture that critics take towards CVE for violence prevention approaches. We are somehow okay with the 60 percent failure rate when it comes to traditional counterterrorism. But if a deradicalization program experiences one instance of recidivism, people want to condemn the entire CVE PVE paradigm, right? We hold CVE and PVE to just this unrealistically high standard that we don't hold any of our other policy prescriptions to. We need to be investing more resources in the violence prevention programming that Matt mentioned in his introduction, in addition to taking steps to improve our traditional counterterrorism posture when it relates to domestic terrorism while protecting civil rights and civil liberties. That is a really difficult thing to do in the counterterrorism space. It's much easier to do in the CVE PVE space. If we take a public health strengths-based approach, as the Department of Homeland Security is taking now, we can address I think this success rate, while still protecting civil rights and civil liberties, we just have to resource it. Slide, please.

My colleague Shihan Cane recently wrote a paper outlining six hypotheses based on the piracy data about how COVID-19 will exacerbate individual level risk factors. And while we've seen—certainly seen some COVID-19 related acts of violence over the past two years, these individual level risk factors, in reality are mingling with a host of other stressors, other uncertainties, and other ideological drivers. This is not a one-dimensional story. Slide, please.

The challenge with COVID-19 is in part about how long the crisis is taken to play out and the compounding crisis that we've experienced along the way, right? While these compounding crises have played out, emergent online discourse and hostile influence operations have really stirred the pot. And so it's very, very difficult to disentangle a specific risk factor when it comes to a violent extremist outcome, when we have all of these intermingling factors and events that are driving political discourse in the United States, and therefore violent political behaviors in the United States as well. I'm not going to walk us all the way through this slide, but I think it suggests that we are a long way from understanding what the implications of COVID-19 will be on violent extremism in part because of how complex this landscape really is, and how it's continually evolving. Slide, please.

So the final implication that I'll leave you with is that we can't only consider hate crime and domestic terrorism in a vacuum. Right? It's good that we consider hate crime and domestic terrorism more holistically like we—like I suggested earlier. But we really have to also understand the way in which these domestic violent extremist phenomena are becoming increasingly internationalized. Right? The extent that our domestic terrorism was ever purely domestic is a little bit intellectually dubious. But certainly, our domestic terrorism and hate crime offenders are becoming more internationalized over time. And we also know that foreign powers are very opportunistically increasing the polarization that is occurring in the United States by amplifying these polarizing acts of violent extremism in the United States. And so really, as we think about this threat, we have to think about it in concert with these other phenomena, if we're really going to get our arms around it. Slide, please.

So I've got some implications for anyone who, you know, request the slide deck at a later date. But with that, I'll—slide, please. You've got my contact information. Happy to answer any questions during the Q&A. Thank you so much, again, to our hosts for having us.

MATTHEW LEVITT: Thank you, Bill. That was fascinating, really excellent coverage in a very short period of time on a very broad waterfront. I'd like to next introduce Dr. Pete Simi. Pete is an associate professor at Chapman University and a member of the NCITE at University of Nebraska, Omaha. He is also co-author of an award-winning book Manuscript American Swastika: Inside the White Power Movements Hidden Spaces of Hate. Dr. Simi will provide an overview of his NIJ-funded research project, Empirical Assessment of Domestic Disengagement and Deradicalization, and speak on domestic terrorism more broadly. Pete, thanks for being here. The floor is yours.

PETE SIMI: Thanks for the introduction and thanks for moderating the panel. And like Bill, I'd really like to thank the NIJ for organizing this and providing support over the years. I'm going to be commenting on the United States specifically, but certainly recognize that this is a global problem more broadly. If we could have our next slide, please.

And just to start with a little bit of background, I started studying violent extremism in 1996, shortly after the Oklahoma City bombing. I wanted to understand how certain cultural and environmental conditions can produce a person like Tim McVeigh. In 1997, I began conducting ethnographic fieldwork with active members of anti-government militia and white supremacist groups and informal networks. I lived with families attended cross burnings, and neo-Nazi music shows, among other things, to try and learn about these cultures, how they're organized, how they recruit new members, and various other aspects of their lives.

Since 2012, we've been conducting intensive life history interviews with more than 100 former extremists from across the United States and several other countries as well, much of which was generously supported by multiple NIJ grants. And in terms of legal consulting, along with Kathleen Blee, we just completed a three-year consultation on the Sines v. Kessler civil trial, which was related to the Unite the Right rally in 2017 in Charlottesville, where on behalf of the plaintiffs, we drafted a report that was submitted to the court and provided testimony about our findings during the trial. And certainly happy to discuss that case in more detail if there's any interest during the Q&A.

And then one other quick point, I really started my career in the mental health field working in a small institutional facility and then moving into community-based group homes, actually living in some of these group homes as a caregiver. And one of the things that I took from that experience is how important mental health is for all of us, not just for those who may be diagnosed with serious mental illness. And I think about that a lot in terms of studying violent extremism. But I also think we have to think about mental health more broadly in terms of society, not just as an individual level characteristic. In other words, different societies, as a whole can have more or less mental health. And society can be organized in certain ways that may increase the likelihood of certain mental health problems. So if we could go to the next slide.

I think this photo is pretty telling in terms of how society is currently struggling with mental health. And I think there's some markers here of unresolved trauma depicted in this photo. And we certainly found a lot of trauma in our own work in terms of individual's backgrounds, going back to childhood, in many cases, and adolescence. But before going too far, I do want to really thank the NIJ for their support over the years, which really began with an award in 2006, to study the recruitment and radicalization among right wing extremists during the 1980s and 90s. And the findings from that project, along with various other studies are very helpful in discussing how we got to J6. So I want to kind of start there in terms of thinking about those decades in terms of the 1980s and 90s. But first, I want to say a few words about language. If we could go to the next slide.

Violent extremism like most violence more broadly is a type of communication. Ironically, there's a lot of difficulty related to how to best describe different types of extremism. Now, when I refer to right-wing extremism, I'm referring to a broad movement without a single central unified leadership, animated by the sense that revolution is necessary in order to achieve some type of national rebirth. Now, some may find the term right-wing extremism to be overly partisan and unhelpful. Violent extremism of any kind though, represents the threat to democracy. And my comments today are really meant to focus on one particular type of threat that has a long history but is especially prominent at the current moment. And I think it's also important to keep in mind that politics is one of the defining features of violent extremism. And if we believe one of the antidotes to violent extremism is more democracy and not less, then we should also remember that the belief in the value of democracy is itself a form of partisanship. If we could go to the next slide, please.

Okay. So I want to start with some basic characteristics that seem especially salient when looking at the ebb and flow of right-wing terror in the United States over the past four decades. In terms of the two bullet points under the continuity subheading, whether we're talking about the death of Posse Comitatus, farmer Gordon Kahl who was killed in a shootout with police in the early 1980s, or the Ruby Ridge or Waco standoffs in the early 1990s or more recently, the Bundy standoffs in Nevada and Oregon. These types of events often serve as catalysts for the far right, helping solidify various types of oppositional narratives, providing recruitment opportunities, and a rallying cry to help mobilize individuals and groups toward the necessity of violence. Over the past 40 years, we've seen the importance of armed encampments used for paramilitary training, as well as the importance of small splinter cells, sometimes emerging from larger existing above ground organizations, and single or lone actors committing violent attacks on behalf of the cause.

The bullet points under the emergent subhead are not necessarily new, but rather have been growing in importance over the past four decades. So for example, the growing decline of institutional legitimacy is a long-standing point of concern. But when looking at the trust in the mainstream media, and congressional approval ratings, we certainly are at all-time lows, at least in recent history. The growing distrust in public education officials at the K to 12 level is interesting, but it's also very disturbing. And of course, the distrust of science, which dovetails with older strains of anti-intellectualism has been widely discussed by historians and other observers. And in terms of polarization, this is also not really new when you consider past periods of racial polarization or the urban rural divide, many other splits but again, today, we seem to be somewhat in unchartered territory, with the degree of polarization in terms of disinformation and misinformation, such that there seems to be less and less shared reality among U.S. citizens.

Likewise, the diffusion of ideas and emotions have always had a viral component in the far right has a long history dating back to at least the early 1980s, in terms of promoting computer technology as a means to spread their ideas. But again, the technology that exists today, the advent of social media, it allows for the diffusion of ideas and feelings to occur at a pace and magnitude that we just haven't seen before. This last bullet, everyday insurgency, I'm going to come back to in a few minutes. So if we could go to the next slide, please.

So what was happening in the 1980s? When you—in many respects, when you think about this, every decade is kind of a continuation of the past decade. And in this slide, you see Louis Beam there in the red Klan robe on the bottom corner, who was both an implementer or an executer of terror plots. In terms of, for instance, the firebombing of Vietnamese fishing boats that happened near Galveston, Texas, but was also an influential ideologue in terms of promoting for instance leaderless resistance which remains a central feature in far right extremism today. In the middle there, you have Bob Matthews founded The Order of the Silent Brotherhood. And to the left in the white collar shirt of Matthews is Bruce Pierce, who was a co-founder of The Silent Brotherhood. The underground terror cell murdered several people, successfully robbed an armored car of more than $2 million, which was distributed across various segments of the far right. Their formation was largely the result of Matthews and other key members recruiting from existing far right networks. One point of contrast between Matthews and Pierce that's interesting to know is that Matthews initiated his radicalization very early in life around the age of 12, although he did not come from a family of extremists. While Pierce who was somewhat of a late starter, so to speak, did not have any known connection to extremism prior to relocating to the northwest, around the age of 30. Shortly after his relocation, he was doing some volunteer coaching at his son's junior high school. One day happened to intervene in a bullying incident and the victim went home and told his father that one of the coaches had helped him that day. The father went to the school the next day in order to thank Pierce in person who really didn't know many people in the area and the father invited him for dinner as a way to say thanks and welcome to the northwest. The father was associated with the Aryan Nations and eventually introduced Pierce to the organization and their beliefs.

Within less than a year, after the bullying incident, Pierce was helping found one of the most violent underground terrorist cells in US history. And in terms of outward appearance, both Matthews and Pierce presented as ordinary individuals who could be your next door neighbor or your coworker. In fact, both were those things before going underground and committing themselves to the Silent Brotherhood. We could go to the next slide, please.

So what about the 1990s? Of course, many people are familiar with the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Now there was a fair amount of domestic terrorism prior to Oklahoma City. But the second half of the 1990s is especially notable. Now you see McVeigh there next to the word terror, and just above McVeigh is Eric Rudolph.

Just a little over a year after Oklahoma City, Eric Rudolph committed the Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta killing two and injuring more than a hundred. Now keep in mind, this was an attack on the Summer Olympic Games. Rudolph then went on to perpetrate three additional bombings targeting a gay nightclub and two abortion clinics. And according to Rudolph himself, he targeted the Olympics because it's—because of its association with "global socialism." You see in the smallest circle in the middle, one of the three right white supremacist who in the summer of 1998 beheaded James Byrd Jr., a black male, who the three tied behind their pickup truck and dragged him to death in Jasper, Texas.

And I want to point out one of—one of the issues that Bill raised, which I think is super important is this overlap between hate crime and terrorism. And I think this is a good example. The tragic murder of Byrd was largely seen as a hate crime, but it was also an act of terrorism and that the individuals were associated with our country's oldest domestic terror organization, the Ku Klux Klan. And so essentially, you had a beheading in the summer of 1998 by the country's oldest terrorist organization. Now, less than a year later, the Columbine school massacre happens. It occurs—it occurred—it was intended to be a bombing, with the goal of producing a larger number of victims than the Oklahoma City bombing. The mastermind Eric Harris was obsessed with both Hitler and McVeigh. Again, in many cases, Columbine, also not seen as necessarily an act of terrorism, but more specifically as a school shooting rampage, which it was, but it was actually intended to be more of a bombing than a shooting. And again, it was very much inspired by McVeigh's actions as well as Hitler's ideology.

And then following the Columbine, which occurred in April of '99, in the summer of '99, two separate lone actor attacks committed by longtime white supremacist, Benjamin Smith and Buford Furrow. Both were associated with different white supremacist organizations. Smith, the World Church of the Creator, and Furrow, the Aryan Nations. This wave of terrorism in the second half of the 1990s involved incidents that were not directly connected to each other in the sense of a single unified conspiracy, but were flowing from the same ideas and emotions, and in many cases flowing from overlapping networks. If we could have the next slide, please.

So now moving into the 2000s, violent extremism during this time period has involved various strategies and tactics. But I want to draw your attention to the prevalence of lone actor attacks in particular, and the broader culture of extremism where this violence emanates from. The point here is that in many respects, these attackers are not really alone because they are acting on behalf of a larger cause, and inspired and influenced by broader networks, and that this is a longstanding strategy that has been promoted through books, speeches, and more recently, videos and meme culture.

One of the important stories of the 2000s that helps us understand how we got to January 6th, is that during these two decades, a cultural infrastructure was being built across various types of media, but also offline in small house parties, Bible study groups and other seemingly innocuous settings. What began in 2000 as relatively underground efforts shifted to the mainstream over time, as segments simultaneously of the mainstream shifted in more extreme directions. If we could go to the next slide, please.

So I want to come back to this slide for just a second to suggest that we've entered a new phase, what you might call everyday insurgency, and help think about everyday insurgency. I want to offer an alternate point of emphasis. If we could go to the next slide.

Rather than looking at the current situation, primarily through the prism of leaders or organizations, I think we would benefit from spending more time focusing on ideas and emotions. I'm not saying leaders and organizations aren't important because clearly they are, but when we focus exclusively on them, we miss certain things. If the—if the circulation of ideas and emotions is the focus, we can see how widespread this type of extremism has actually become. But ideas and emotions don't operate in some disembodied way. They of course require people to express them through practices and in terms of our focus, violent practices.

The term everyday insurgency is meant to convey that there is so much happening right now on a day-to-day basis, it becomes easy to lose sight of interconnections. A major dimension of this everyday insurgency involves the untold number of nameless, faceless people who are threatening our election and public health officials. So much so that in some cases, these officials have been forced to resign and go into hiding. These threats or acts of terrorism, and are both directly and indirectly connected to each other through a web of ideas and emotions. Even if no overt acts of violence ever emerged such threats have a very specific political motivation and intended outcomes. Violence need not occur for these threats to be effective.

Now, just as an illustration of the pervasiveness of the problem right now, consider the following brief summary of just one ABC News article published in January 2021 and one Reuters News article published in December 2021. It produced the following discussion about threats to election officials and only one state Georgia. Death threats directed at Paul—at Brad Raffensperger and his spouse, Republican Secretary of State in Georgia. Bomb threats directed at multiple polling locations, unnamed Atlanta vote counter forced into hiding in November of 2020. A news found at Dominion voting office in December of 2020, Gwinnett County vote counter followed home and called a racial slur in December of 2020. Two temporary election workers, Ruby Freeman and her daughter targeted with hundreds of threats. Ruby was ultimately urged by the FBI to leave her home on January 5th of 2021 because it was "unsafe." The following day, on January 6, a mob surrounded her house. And again, this incident followed months and months of death threats and harassment. And unfortunately, Georgia is just one of many states where these types of threats are occurring. We could go to our next slide.

So how do we respond to the kind of just terror that we've been discussing? Well, it has to be multidimensional, we have to target multiple levels. Of course, at the broadest level in terms of society, we're going to have to start thinking, I think more creatively and more boldly. If we agree that our democracy is under threat, then that will require certain actions that maybe in the past, we didn't think were necessary. Now, at the same time, though, as I mentioned at the outset, the importance of trauma is critical. And there's some very important work that needs to be done at the individual level as well. And that's what I'll focus on in my remaining comments. Go to the next slide.

In terms of individual focused interventions, Europe and other parts of the globe have a longer history developing and implementing these types of efforts. But this area is starting to gain traction in the U.S. And I want to focus on one organization in particular Life After Hate that I've been volunteering with as a board member since 2017. And now more recently, I'm serving as their current Interim Executive Director, while we search for a permanent person to take on that role.

Life After Hate was founded by former extremist, primarily former white supremacist to help individuals leave far right—violent far right extremism. We provide services to individuals who self-refer, as well as family and friends who know someone they believe is starting to radicalize toward this type of extremism or who has already radicalized, as you can imagine a person in that situation may not know where to turn and we try to provide support for that person in various ways. Now, one of the questions or challenges in some—in some respects that we confront at Life After Hate, and I think it's a very fair question that revisits some of what we've already been discussing in terms of the scale of the problem, which is this, given the scale of the problem today, is this kind of one individual at a time approach enough? Now, the answer, quite honestly, is no, it's not enough. But it is a necessary part of this larger multidimensional approach that I just mentioned. In other words, you know, it's the cliche, we have to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. The type of interventions that Life After Hate and similar programs provide are critical.

And when you think about the potential ripple effects of these types of interventions, it's even more astounding. So for instance, if you just think what if Robert Bowers, the Tree of Life shooter had received some type of intervention prior to the attack that he committed. Dylann Roof, Patrick Crusius, the El Paso shooter, so on and so forth. We'll never really know how many hate crimes and acts of domestic terrorism these types of interventions may prevent. But we do know from our interviews with formers, that a substantial amount of violence occurs at various points in a person's time while they're involved, prior to disengagement. But once a person starts to disengage, once they start to make a move to leave, violence decreases substantially. So this tells us how much harm can be reduced through more investment in these kinds of resources, and frankly, saving more lives.

And finally, as a—as a—as a note, my colleagues and I are just in—just this month actually starting a new NIJ award to more systematically track some of these issues in terms of disengagement in partnership with Life After Hate, where we plan to follow a cohort of individuals who are in the process of disengagement. And we'll try and measure in some perfect—prospective fashion the disengagement process, in hopes of better understanding how this unfolds in real time. And what types of things can be done to increase the likelihood that individuals are able to successfully disengage and remain disengaged as they move towards deradicalization. Thank you very much for your time.

MATTHEW LEVITT: Thank you for that presentation. Fascinating. I want to remind all of our participants that your questions are very much encouraged. Please post them in the Q&A function, which you should find to the right of your screen. Please post them in the Q&A function and not the chat function. Thank you very much.

I'd next like to introduce Dr. Haroro Ingram, who's a senior research fellow at The Program on Extremism at George Washington University. Haroro currently runs several infantry applied research projects, mostly focused on enhancing civil society CVE capabilities. He'll speak to his experience researching militant Islamist movements, including the so-called Islamic State, and violent non-state political movements. Haroro, thank you for joining us, especially given the time difference. The floor is yours.

HARORO INGRAM: Thank you, Matt. And thank you to the organizers for the opportunity to participate on this—on—particularly with such an excellent lineup of speakers. I really appreciate this opportunity. I received an excellent range of questions around which to focus the next 10 to 15 minutes with the remarks.

I'm particularly reflecting on my experiences in the Middle East and Asia, which I think really can be condensed down somewhat to a couple of core questions.

The first is, what are some of the key markers and milestones of the evolution of particularly the jihadist threat landscape over the last two decades? And what do they suggest to us about how to posture for dealing with a volatile security environment in the homeland, a persistent global jihadist threat and all the while dealing with the challenges of the global great power competition. Now, much of what I will only very briefly touch upon today, you can find in much more details here the Mosul and the Islamic State podcast, I was working with Omar Mohammed and Andrew Mines. The ISIS Reader, which tracks the evolution of the Islamic State movement through its own speeches, publications, doctrinal materials from about the mid-1990s to the end of its so-called caliphate and its transformation into a global insurgency. And finally, The Long Jihad, which analyzes the Islamic state's method of insurgency, in both its theory by analyzing what I call its insurgency canon, 14 documents produced by the Islamic state's insurgency thinkers and practitioners throughout its history. But also, it analyzes its practice by examining the broad history of its operations eventually leading to its capture and control of Mosul.

So, what are some of the key markers and milestones of the evolution of the—of the jihadist landscape? In answering this question, what kind of caused me to reflect on I guess the trajectory of my own career. I'd actually just finished high school at the time of the September 11 attacks, and a few years later started my career working in human counterterrorism operations. So basically, how equivalent UK Special Branch review in a state in Australia. Now, at that stage, Al-Qaeda and its network affiliates and supporters were the primary threats of concern. And I've also worked on far right groups, but it was primarily groups that were an individual's networks that were linked to or inspired by Al-Qaeda. So when I started, Zarqawi was the rising star of the global jihadist movement. But in the final years of that particular role, it was an American, Anwar al-Awlaki, that was at the core of our primary operations. Now, just so happened that I left that role soon after Awlaki and [INDISTINCT] were killed. And it was from the defense department that I witnessed the first couple of years of the Arab Spring sweeping across the Middle East, and the resurgence of the Islamic State of Iraq group in Iraq, and then spreading obviously, as we know, into Syria.

So by the time I leave government in early 2014 to work as a field researcher, and after that I spent time on the ground in Iraq, the Syrian opposition in Afghanistan and many other places, ISIS is the flagship, it establishes its caliphate. Over the years, it develops its network of affiliates, including in Asia. So from late 2017 and early 2018, I spent a lot of time in the Southern Philippines supporting peace process efforts there, and kind of saw firsthand what those dynamics look like on the ground. But by the time ISIS are territorially and materially decimated, it has essentially already transitioned to a global insurgency model. Now, I provide this all as context, because these perspectives have naturally shaped my own views of the evolution of the jihadist landscape. But I also do it to highlight this tendency, I think, for certain milestones, certain evolutionary markers, to emerge in our minds, almost with hindsight, and always as the outward projection or manifestation of dynamics that have actually been bubbling away under the surface for some time.

So I want to draw your attention to three in particular that I think that I would assess, looking back signaled a crucial change or a crucial pivot point in the global jihadist threat landscape. The first of these is Bin Laden's rise and extraordinary global charismatic appeal. The global Jihadism really is, you know, it's largely the exception to the rule. Jihad is local, is kind of the mantra, I guess. But Al-Qaeda emerges with the intent of being not just a vanguard, but a force multiplier for those local efforts. And so through the 1990s, it laid the foundations in very practical way, and by providing money, training, and logistical support to these local groups, local actors. I think that the real transformation comes with Bin Laden's rise as a charismatic leader. And I say a charismatic leader in the true kind of sociological sense of the word. You know, charisma is an emotion-based leader for all. It merges due to a mutually empowering if asymmetric mix of the leader's image and narrative being seen as extraordinary, and that being recognized by our followers. Now, this explanation may sound a little bit academic, but it actually really matters in a practical sense, for reasons that I'll address very soon. So Bin Laden's charisma not only holds together Al-Qaeda's network of affiliates, I would argue that it facilitates the rise of other charismatic figures who emerge, at least in part, by building on Bin Laden's charismatic capital, so the metastasizing of the jihadist threat from 1998, but especially after 2001. Yes, it's driven by very practical hard factors, but they were also tremendously important and powerful symbolic factors to the power of the charismatic figure, with both local and global spheres of influence is really significant through this period and remains so.

The second milestone I want to just bring your attention to is 2011 as a really transformative year in the global jihad. You have the Arab Spring sweeping across the region, Bin Laden was killed in May, Maliki was killed in September, and at the end of that year, the withdraw, U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. The contextual conditions, the opportunities for jihadist groups to engage and to exploit crises, especially in Syria, is greater from this point forward than at any point since the Iraq war. There is also a Bin Laden-sized hole in the global jihadist milieu and a Maliki-sized legacy in the western jihadist milieu that I think is really important for us to consider. What charismatic leadership studies teach us is that the removal of a charismatic figure creates a vacuum and a competition for their legacy, to build on their authority and to build on that charismatic capital in order for new leaders to rise and emerge. Now, I suspect that so much of the Islamic state movement's efforts to emerge as the flagship, particularly through 2013, '14 onwards, was an effort to exploit both ground level opportunities that presented across the Levant, but also top-down opportunities in the wake of Bin Laden's death. Yes, Bin Laden was largely obsolete in a practical sense, perhaps for years, sitting and hiding in Pakistan, but his symbolic significance was always important. And it remained important, not just after his death, but after his death. So the Islamic state then emerges by presenting its leader as the Caliph, a legal rational or traditional type of leadership. That type of leadership, that type of authority is comparatively more stable than a charismatic figure. And it's certainly more authoritative or at least is an effort to be more authoritative, in a strategic jurisprudential in a political military sense. So, we see the rise of the jihadist proto-state efforts that kind of reflect the transitions that I'm trying to capture in this particular milestone.

The third and final milestone and, I guess, cheating a little bit here, because this is an ongoing kind of challenge, although it has become particularly pronounced. Again, in the aftermath of ISIS territorial collapse and the rise of the Taliban to control Afghanistan once again, but it's this manhunt competition. It's the competition over what method a jihadist group will adopt to engage in its violent campaign to reach the ultimate goal of establishing a state. This is the competition that is really at the heart of the tensions between Al Qaeda and ISIS, the comparatively need to emphasize comparatively more gradualist approach of Al Qaeda and the more disruptive approach of ISIS. If we could just go to the next slide, please.

During my experiences working on the ground in the Southern Philippines, I've seen the way in which these primary exports for ISIS are deployed to its affiliates. And on the ground, if we just go to the next slide, please, throughout—and specifically in the Philippines, we see these dynamics playing out the way they have in many other places where a group like, for example, Abu Sayyaf, traditionally, historically, aligned with Al-Qaeda. You see—then see them through 20—its members through 2014, '15, '16, breaking away and aligning with ISIS. And at the heart of a lot of these were tensions about, "What are we doing?" "How can we be more impactful, more effective on the ground here?" Particularly amidst in the case of the Southern Philippines, ongoing peace process efforts, and I suspect that Taliban successes have indirectly boosted the credentials of Al-Qaeda's approach in the eyes of many jihadist groups.

So what are some of the lessons that emerge from these milestones? Focused on three, I think that the impact of charismatic figures persist, the charismatic figures remain an important part of understanding the evolution and the dynamics of Jihadist threats. Secondly, there is this ongoing competition for legitimacy of authority, and not just authority in terms of the leader but political military authority, jurisprudential authority, the legitimacy and efficacy of strategies. These are constantly evolving and changing due to counterterrorism efforts, but also intra-movement efforts. And the third point that I'd like to make is that the local retains primacy. However, there is a mutually reinforcing dynamic between top down global forces and bottom up local forces. Now, I've spoken about these three lessons, specifically from the jihadist's perspective. But what I think is important is that these three lessons are applicable across the broader threat landscape.

I want to conclude, I guess, by wrapping up with some of the broader implications for policy posture. My overarching point on the jihadist threat is that while great power competition has necessarily become a priority, we should not let the policy pendulum swing and allow focus on jihadist threats, too low or too far. Indeed, I would argue that these objectives are mutually supportive. Nowhere is this better highlighted, I think, than in the Philippines. It is kind of baffling to me to see that the lack of U.S. involvement and engagement in peace efforts in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao, the Philippines is a crucial ally for the United States. And it sits at a vital geopolitical, kind of, fault line there. The aggression by China in the West Philippine Sea is just one example of the—of the types of concerns that the Philippines are grappling with and yet so much of their focus is internally. The amount of Filipino blood and treasure that has been spilled in the south is enormous. If we stop and think for a moment, the success of peace efforts in the south against the range of jihadist groups would allow the Philippines to transition its posture from internal security threats to potentially looking at more at the region, and supporting allies across the region. And so a sustainable peace in the south it may seem like a domestic internal issue, but it has really significant implications for the Philippines and in terms of U.S.-Philippines but also Australia and other allied relationships with Philippines. Peace in the south is really important. It's an example of addressing jihadist threats in a manner that I think opens up and contributes to a great power competition as well.

As we look at United States and domestic threats, I want to end by emphasizing the importance of those three lessons, and the broader applicability, the identification, and monitoring of charismatic figures, the kind of the competition for legitimacy, but also the strategic competition, what kind of strategies and operations are going to have the most success domestically? And that consideration of yes, local will retain primacy but there is a mutually reinforcing dynamic between top-down global forces and bottom up local forces. And I suspect having engaged with U.S. and other allies, especially across the EU, that there are these concerns that the threat landscape is so volatile at the moment. That there is this mix of state and non-state malign influence threats that are so concerning, as someone from the EU said to me the other day, "It looks like mayhem to us," and that really reminded me sitting here in January 2022 of the kind of sentiments that were expressed in 2014, that this idea of we haven't seen anything like this before when ISIS was rising. And I suspect that one of the great challenges that we have for policymakers is to provide a lens through which to understand this range of different threats. And if we just go to the—to the next slide, or rather the last slide.

It's through—what my most recent work has tried to do is to establish a lens or a framework through which to try to understand a spectrum of state and non-state malign influence actors as part of an anti-democratic malign influence effort. And it focuses in on this idea of a trinity of trusts, being the target of propaganda and misinformation threats, and that there is this reinforcing cycle that they're seeking to fuel. And while I'm going to leave it there, I'm more than happy to address any questions that people may have during the final session. And thanks very much, Matt, again for the opportunity.

MATTHEW LEVITT: Haroro, thank you for that presentation, very much appreciated. I want to jump straight into our final presentation by Dr. Hazel Atuel and Dr. Carl Castro. Hazel Atuel is a Research Associate Professor at the School of Social Work at the University of Southern California. Her research focuses on military social work, intergroup relations, social identity, and moral injury. Dr. Carl Castro is also a professor at the School of Social Work at USC. Additionally, he is the research director for the USC's—USC Center for Innovation and Research on Veteran and Military Families. And he previously served 33 years in the U.S. Army. Dr. Atuel and Dr. Castro will discuss their grant with NIJ, Exploring the Social Networks of Homegrown Violent Extremist Military Veterans and how the U.S. history of extremism relates to those with military experience. Hazel and Carl, thank you so much. The floor is yours.

HAZEL ATUEL: Thank you, Matt. We are very excited and very honored to be part of this panel. We're definitely learning a lot from the panelists. We are pretty much the new kids on the block. So let me just start off with the story of how we got here. Next slide, please.

So in 2016, there were back-to-back shootings that involved two military veterans as perpetrators, which got us thinking to what's going on here, right? So we reached in our back pockets and decided to map this out considering some of the theories that we have developed at the center and also some of the research that we have conducted and came up with this working hypothesis way back in 2016. So we said that when it comes to perhaps these two case studies, the pre-military or the civilian stage where people—this is before they enter into the military, this is where the seeds of, let's say hate, are planted. And this is also where behaviors are formed and values are acquired. Now, we also know that people have individual personalities, right? So there will be some individual level factors that will play into this. You also have various networks that people are a part of during their civilian phase and that could be the family, that could be the church, that could be their schools. And we know that each of these groups or each of these institutions have an influencing factor in the civilian life. We also know that there are certain stressors that people face during the civilian phase. And I think some of our panelists have alluded to that, particularly trauma, adverse childhood experiences, or even societal factors, like let's say poverty.

Now, when they enlist—when people enlist in the military, they carry with them these civilian predispositions, so everything in their individual level factors, what they learned from their network, and also the stressors that they have experienced during the civilian life. And as they become indoctrinated into the military institution and engage in military life, here we see various levels of factors that are operating. First of all, is the formation of a military identity and we know that the military is a value-based institution. We also know that there are different networks within the military. And so they have an influencing function as well. We also know about the various military stressors that people face, there's deployment, there's definitely war trauma. And then for military personnel, there's also the geographical mobility that they face every two, three, or four years, there's combat training. And then we were actually interested in the type of discharge, at least for the two cases that we were looking at. One of them was honorably discharged, and the other one was not. So we said the type of discharge could factor in here. And overarchingly, we call the military phase as this is the sharpening phase, right, when it comes to these two cases.

Now, when they transition out of the military, and are in the veteran or post-military phase, again, they already carry with them, not only their civilian predispositions, but their military experience, and now they're facing a whole new set of factors that they need to confront in veteran life. First of all, is the formation of a veteran identity, and we have a veteran identity theory that we have developed, where we said that a veteran identity is past military identity operating in present civilian space and time. We also know that as veterans, they have acquired several networks. They have their civilian networks, their family networks, their previous military networks, and now their veteran networks. We also know that they're facing several stressors, at least, for these two—these two veterans. In our case study, we said, "Let's need to consider perhaps PTSD or this phenomenon called moral injury," and we'll talk about that in the next couple of slides. Next slide, please.

So we said—and, you know, as social scientists we said, "Okay, let's try to collect more data." And this is our earlier work on mass shootings and mass violence. And in terms of mass shootings, we've decided as a starting point, Charles Whitman, who is a Marine veteran, is considered as the first mass shooter in modern history. And of course, you have here Lee Harvey Oswald, whom we consider as our starting point for mass violence. Next slide, please.

So based on the data that we collected on 104 people with military background, what we see here is that 79 percent engaged in their violent act after they left military services. So they already had a veteran—they were already veterans to begin with. Seven percent were training dropouts, so they were booted out during a boot camp. And 14 percent were active duty personnel. When we took a look at the motives for these mass shootings and mass violence, and we borrowed this for Fox and Levin's typology of serial and mass murderers, what we found is that almost half, 47 percent can—were because of terroristic reasons, 15 percent for mental health, 9 percent for power reasons, 19 percent revenge, more than likely workplace revenge, 7 percent for loyalty, and 3 percent for profit. So that's when we pivoted and said, "We need to take a look at some of the historical markers of terrorism and people with past military background." Next slide, please.

Because we're a little short in time, I'm not going to go through each of these historical markers. I think all of us are already familiar with the fact that in the aftermath of the Civil War, the KKK was founded by six former officers of the Confederate Army. In World War I—in the aftermath of World War I, I would just like to share that in 1933, the Friends of New Germany was established in the U.S. as an extend—as an extension of the German Nazi Party. The group which comprised mostly of German World War I veterans was mainly based in New York City, but had a strong presence in the Chicago area. The group gained the attention of Congress and was investigated for their anti-Semitic propaganda. They dissolved in 1935 and instead, the German American Bund was formed in 1936. This was led by Fritz Kuhn, another German World War I veteran, and the group's rhetoric now included anti-communism, pro-German, and also pro-American rhetoric. So the group declined after Kuhn was arrested for tax evasion and finally deported to Germany after World War II.

So, in World War II, what we find is that the American Nazi Party was created and led by U.S. Navy veteran Commander George Lincoln Rockwell, who is a known segregationist, anti-Semite, and Holocaust denier, trained as a pilot who served in the European and Pacific theatres during World War II, and transitioned into civilian life after the war. He was recalled as a lieutenant commander at the beginning of the Korean War in the 1950s. But was assessed to be non-deployable because of his political views and given an honorable discharge in 1960. And I think all of us are already familiar with Kathleen Belew's work on the Modern White Power Movement.

Okay, so some research highlights here. On World War I veterans, Willard Waller is a World War I veteran and sociologist. And in his book, he shares his own and his veteran peers' experiences during World War I, as well as his grandfather's experience as a Civil War veteran. He believes that the war experience generates a level of bitterness that veterans must confront. And a veteran's response to this bitterness will be determined by three factors: his temperament, who he is before entering military service; his military experience, what happened to him during the war; and then his transition experience, how he is coping during the integration process. It's interesting that this was written during the rise of fascism and Nazism in Europe. So he was well aware how autocratic leaders can persuade and manipulate veterans. Next slide, please.

So some research highlights on World War II veterans, Bettelheim and the Janowitz monograph is an important literature for those who really want to get into military veteran extremism. So in their research, they added stereotypical beliefs of Jews and Blacks as well as history of poor adjustment in society as risk factors. Now in their particular study, what they were looking at were racially intolerant US veterans who—this was during World War II who had six—I think between six to eight months of separating from the army and is living—they were living in the Chicago area. In terms of their military experience for this intolerant group of veterans, they were also more likely to report getting a bad break in their army career and also more likely to be embittered about their army experience. And finally, in terms of their veteran experience, they reinforced stereotypic thinking with conspiracy theories, and as veterans, they held anti-government beliefs. In a follow up study, Bettelheim and Janowitz also found that this group of racially intolerant veterans were found to be susceptible to fascist propaganda and to appeals by a demagogue. And finally, next slide, please.

Adding to the literature, we have Ritzer, who is a Vietnam veteran himself and wanted to take a look at the political radicalization and Vietnam veteran. So he had done qualitative interviews. And what he found was for those who became politically radicalized, there were some risk factors that were operating before they came into the military. First of all, there was a growing sense of community alienation. And then secondly, their coping strategy was to challenge community practices based on alternative principles. And then when it came to their military experience, and this is where the moral injury comes in, they found themselves betrayed by their national leaders and appalled at their own complicity as executioners. So in Jonathan Shay's work with Vietnam veterans, he described this as moral injury, which is a betrayal of what's right by someone in legitimate authority in a high-stakes situation. We also have our own theory of moral injury, which we are saying is the experience of moral failure, whether you're a victim, a witness, or a perpetrator that threatens your character or the integrity of your character. So next slide, please.

So having gone through some of the historical markers, and also some of the research that's been conducted in the area, we have been applying for the past four years to get this project funded. And so before briefly introducing you to the military radicalization project, I would just like to say that it took five proposals submitted to three agencies across four years to get to this point. The two other agencies will remain unnamed, but we are grateful to NIJ for supporting this project from the very outset.

So the military radicalization project was funded in 2019 is both theory and evidence-informed. We are working with Dr. Arie Kruglanski who is over at the University of Maryland, on his Quest for Significance Theory as one of the frameworks that we'll be using. And in his theory, he proposes that a person's needs, a person's narratives in terms of what he hears from the different networks influence the radicalization process. We're also using military transition theory which was developed by Carl and Dr. Kinzel. Mapping, again, this out from pre-military civilian to military and from military to post-military and veteran, we are also taking a look at some of the transition challenges that military veterans are facing basic needs like housing, employment, finances, healthcare, and of course, some of the most social factors of status and reputation. We're also taking a look at veteran identity theory, which again, I said earlier is past military identity operating in present civilian space and time. And then we're also taking a look at some of the risk factors that have already been identified in NIJ-funded research and this is a great resource for those of us who are doing research in this area. Next slide, please.

This is just an illustration of what we are trying to capture in this project, we are trying to look for uniqueness and also commonalities between civilians and military veterans who have engaged in domestic terrorism, we're taking a look at risk factors, and whether or not the quest for significance applies to them. We also decided to add a comparison group of veterans who have not engaged in violent extremism. And in addition to the risk factors and quest for significance, we are also looking at military experience and the transition experience. Next slide, please.

Okay, in the interest of time, I'm just going to—if you could go to probably three or four slides where it says overall findings ahead of this, there you go. Perfect. So study one is a secondary analysis of the American terrorism study database. And very briefly, we can send you the publication for this, which was recently published in the military psychologist, and essentially, our overall findings boiled down to this: compared to civilians, people with a military background are more likely to be older, be male in a domestic partnership, belong to right wing groups, hold a leadership position in a group, and target government officials and buildings as well as social minority groups. So next slide, please.

In study two, what we are actually—another slide, please. Great. In study two, we are actually conducting interviews with people from the various social networks. We have identified 30 civilians who have engaged in domestic terrorism between 2003 to 2019, and another 30 military veterans as a comparison group, we have identified through court documents and also open sources some of the family members and also some of the civilian peers or military peers or veteran peers that we can interview.

So right now, this phase of the study is still ongoing, but I would just like to share some preliminary findings. If you can just go to preliminary findings. Okay. So this is just to show all of you how our working hypotheses is work—is being applied to the data that we are now collecting. So this is a case study of a military veteran, the 2009 Holocaust Memorial shooter, James von Brunn. So pre-military phase, he was born in 1920, graduated with a journalism degree in Washington University in 1942. And it was while he was in college that he was perceived as a Nazi because of anti-Semitic beliefs. He enlisted in the military right after and served as a PT boat captain in both the Mediterranean and Pacific theatres. It was during this time—next slide, please.

It was during this time that he meets then Commander John G. Crommelin, who was a known segregationist and anti-Semite. And he was— James von Brunn was honorably discharged in 1946. Next slide, please.

In 1947, he moves to New York City, was advised to change his German last name to make him more employable. In 1964, he meets retired Lieutenant General Pedro del Valle, who is one of the cofounders of the Defenders of the American Constitution. In 1968, he gets into— James von Brunn gets into a bar brawl for anti-Semitic remarks and serves two years in prison. '75, collaborates with Florence Robinette on Zionist Rape of the Holy Land. 1981, he engaged in a failed kidnapping attempt of the Federal Reserve board that served six years in prison. And in 2009, he enacted the Holocaust Museum shooting in D.C. in 2010. He dies while awaiting trial.

Next slide, please. And this is just part of his writings from his 400-page manifesto.

Next slide, please. Okay. A future research, this is just a view from the past. And again, this is from Willard Waller, where he was advocating for the art and science of veteran rehabilitation. I think all of us have been calling for a multidisciplinary approach to radicalization. And this was his view as well, early in the past century. But I think we also—as applied to military veterans, we need to extend that line of thinking to reflect a lifecycle approach where we take into consideration what happened to military veterans during the civilian phase, during the military phase and then during the veteran phase. Okay. I am now going to turn the last couple of slides over to Carl.

CARL CASTRO: Thank you very much, Hazel. Can I have the next slide, please? So one of the things that we really want to, again, take a really hard look at is a lot of the predispositions that many individuals have when they join the military, because we think it's really, really important to take a look at the trajectory that they are on. Because we think that this provides an opportunity for the military services to do an effective intervention while these service members join in or on active duty. And as Hazel mentioned in the very beginning, the military is a value-based organization, and all of the services have taken this very active approach in working to shape the character and identity of their service members. And we believe that given the age at which most Americans join the military, they are really ripe for value and virtue development or character development that actually could serve as an intervention for the military. While service members are on active duty, there's lots of networks and in the militaries, the U.S. military in particular is working very closely to do a better job of monitoring the networks and the susceptibility that service members have to being recruited by extremist groups. But I think this quest for significance is a really, really important concept because many individuals join the military to be more than they are, to be something bigger than themselves. And if this quest is thwarted, or they fail, or they believe the organization hasn't taken care of them, we think this could really lead to a really bad transition out of the military which also then can make them susceptible to recruitment into actually joining and participating in extremist organizations. Next slide.

So there are obviously some potential threats to withdraw from Afghanistan, this sort of feeling that the wars there, in both Iraq and Afghanistan were futile, a waste of resources. The—and many service members are very angry about the extremist regulations as they pertain to the Confederate flag, as they pertain to tattoos that service members are able to get. And then, the sort of the discharge, potential and actual the non-compliance with the COVID-19 vaccinations, and then when service members are separated because of extremist beliefs, we think this could actually exacerbate or enhance a veteran's propensity for radicalization. And so there needs to be a smoother handoff in transition, and certainly an awareness of removing an extremist from active duty and just putting them back in the civilian side, doesn't really solve the problem from an American perspective, it only solves it from a military perspective, but the problem could potentially still exist. Next slide.

So that's, in a nutshell, what Hazel and I have been working on for the last—the last few years. And I will just say that I am not an expert on extremism or terrorism. I am learning a lot and but so, you know, Hazel and I both collaborate with others, you know, our contribution really is a deep understanding of the military culture and how identities and attitudes around one's time in the military can manifest itself post-military service and actually in a few cases, as we noted, while in the military service, so thank you.

MATTHEW LEVITT: Carl, Hazel, thank you for that presentation, really informative. So ladies and gentlemen, you've had four really insightful presentations, fabulous examples of the important grant making work that NIJ is engaged in. It's a sign of really smart presentations that we went a little bit long, perhaps. And so we're not going to have time for the kind of Q&A that we had hoped for. But I wanted to let you know that we will be saving the questions and we'll be posting them to the website with answers afterwards. For those who are curious, if you haven't looked, I had been bunching these together in baskets trying to get as many as possible. And to my mind, they fell into baskets of conspiracy disinformation issues, issues related to international relations such as the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the pivot to Asia, the next frontier abroad, and in particular, a couple of questions about Africa, whether we need more laws to better prosecute extremism, domestic terrorism, and hate. Here at home, for example, do we need a domestic terrorism statute? A couple of questions that got to things that frankly I wanted to avoid them a little bit which is domestic politics and whether policies of one type of a president or another type of a president leads to extremism, very, very valuable questions, but I didn't want this to become a partisan discussion or debate. And finally, social media, and what type of challenges does social media present and what type potentially of opportunities. So I want to thank all of the presenters and turn it back over to Chris for some closing remarks. Okay. I think we might have lost Chris, so let me turn it over to Aisha.

AISHA QURESHI: Thank you so much, Matt, for moderating this panel. And thank you all so much for presenting. We're very grateful to the audience for all the wonderful questions that we got. Unfortunately, like Matt said, this is a sign of a great panel and we had to go a little bit over time. But we have saved your questions. And we have also been told that you can ask any remaining questions that you might have had, obviously, that we didn't get a chance to get to at nij.ojp.gov/asknij, and we hope to be able to get back to you through that. And with that, I think we will conclude our seminar. Thank you all so much. Have a great day.

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Additional Questions and Answers

Opinions or points of view expressed in these questions and answers represent those of the audience members and speakers and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Q: Will there be an NIJ grant solicitation regarding domestic terrorism prevention or terrorism prevention more generally?

A:  Yes. See Research and Evaluation on Domestic Radicalization and Violent Extremism, Fiscal Year 2022 for Information on the forthcoming solicitation.

Q: Do you have information on radicalization among inmates?

See the following for previous NIJ work in this area:

• Prisoner Radicalization: Assessing the Threat in U.S. Correctional Institutions
• Behavioral Study of the Radicalization Trajectories of American "Homegrown" Al Qaeda-Inspired Terrorist Offenders
• Terrorist Age-Crime Curve: An Analysis of American Islamist Terrorist Offenders and Age-Specific Propensity for Participation in Violent and Nonviolent Incidents
• Toward a Behavioral Model of "Homegrown" Radicalization Trajectories

Q: ­Is there a definition of "far Left" and "Far Right" you are using?

A: The Global Terrorism Database Codebook  and PIRUS Codebook  provide clarity on this question.

Q: ­It seems agreed by many observers that social media has been a key driver in propagating extremist ideology and dividing our society from having a "shared reality." Have there been any studies or research conducted that examine innovative methods that can be leveraged to utilize this same technology to assist with counteracting extremism?­

A: ­There are several NIJ-funded studies (some ongoing, some completed) that cover this. A few examples from NIJ-funded research include:

Virtual Extremism in the U.S. from 2012-2017 , tried to help us better understand how violent domestic extremist groups and individuals use the Internet and how do people who are exposed to this extremist material get impacted or influenced by it. This study found that the use of particular ­social networking sites, such as Reddit, Tumblr, and general messaging boards, is positively related to the dissemination of hate material online, and that Caucasians are more likely than other race/ethnic groups to be exposed to online hate material.

An Assessment of Extremist Groups Use of Web Forums, Social Media, and Technology to Enculturate and Radicalize Individuals to Violence : These researchers reviewed over 16,000 posts from seven web forums operating on-line with a Far-Right nexus both in the US and abroad. They found that far right forums have very low network density, suggesting that there is a degree of information recycling that happens, which results in these sort of insular echo chambers, and that because of that, new information is ­actually spread more slowly. ­

­Lastly, Social Learning and Social Control in the Off- and Online Pathways to Hate Crime and Terrorist Violence explored similarities and differences in the use of social media by various ideological extremists and found that the most common platform used in this sample was Facebook, which is in keeping with general patterns of social media use overall. ­­They found a greater number of far-right actors with Facebook accounts than any other extremists, and found that Twitter use was slightly higher among radical Islamists (2; 3.8%) than far right actors (1; 1.8%). A lot more detail is available in that final report, but the bottom line from that analysis is suggests that patterns of social media use vary across ideological groups may be indicative of the interests and backgrounds of the perpetrators.

­­These are just a few highlights of completed projects.

Q: What sorts of trauma stories are you hearing, especially from persons with hate against Blacks?­

A:  We’ve published several articles that discuss some of these findings and have calculated ACE (adverse childhood experiences) scores for our sample of former violent far right extremists. The scores are much higher than general population and comparable to other high-risk populations such as incarcerated samples or samples of conventional street gangs. The traumas include most of the generic types of risk factors we have long known are unhealthy and often produce all sorts of negative consequences related to physical, psychological, and social development. For example, we’ve found relatively high levels of sexual abuse, physical abuse, parental neglect, abandonment, and family substance use problems. Some helpful articles related to this topic include:

• Measuring the Extent and Nature of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) among Former White Supremacists
• Narratives of Childhood Adversity and Adolescent Misconduct as Precursors to Violent Extremism: A Life-Course Criminological Approach

Q: ­To what extent are all the far right threats explored today, a form of religious Christian terrorism and extremism? Should we not address them as such, and can we learn from fighting other forms of religious extremism to counter these threats?­

A:  Yes, there is definitely a segment of the far right animated by both more general Christian Nationalism and in other cases a more specific type of Christian extremism known as Christian Identity. However, other segments of the violent far-right are not especially influenced by Christianity or may be influenced by other spiritual thought systems such as Odinism (Nordic mythology). I think part of what we can learn is not to make some of the same mistakes in terms of lumping all Christians together as has often been the case with Muslims.

Q. Ideas, values/bonds, emotions and moral meta-values play a key role in inciting for extremist acts. Is there any particular kind of analysis you would suggest besides linguistic analysis of inciting extremist text?­

A:  This needs a lot more attention and thought but social network analysis and network text analysis offer opportunities here. The key is changing how we conceptualize these issues away from predominantly group-centric approaches. Ethnographic fieldwork and interview-based designs can also help because they can capture the “messiness” of things.  

Q: ­The war in Afghanistan cost a lot of American lives and also billions of dollars, yet the Taliban took back Afghanistan in less than a week. Is the U.S. war on terror working or there is a need to change the narrative and invest more in deradicalization?

A:  Some of NIJ’s work in the deradicalization space can be found in the report “ Empirical Assessment of Domestic Disengagement and Deradicalization (EAD) .”

Q: ­What do you think is the major factor behind the availability of recruits for terrorism and violent extremist especially among youths like ISWAP/Biko Haram in Nigeria.?

A:  This is not my specific area of research so I highly recommend the excellent work of Bulama Bukarti on this topic, especially the newest paper by Bulama Bukarti being published by the George Washington University Program on Extremism in March.

Q: ­How will the increased concern and focus of domestic extremism, especially since January 6, change the field of terrorism and violent extremism?­

A:  The field is stretching and trying to catch up given how little attention was previously devoted to domestic extremism. The events of January 6th are furthering that process but as we move forward we need to be careful about losing sight of other ongoing types of extremism across the globe (i.e., be cautious of over-correcting) and we should also be cautious about the popular tendency to treat all forms of domestic extremism as equal threats. The reality is that violent far right extremism has been and remains the most substantial threat in terms of domestic extremism and the data is very clear on that.

Q: ­ Legally, it has been difficult to charge individuals who have committed domestic terror attacks. Should better defined laws be implemented to lend the justice system to better charge these individuals for their actions? ­

A:  This is clearly a big debate at the moment. I think before any new statutes are designed and implemented, we should be sure the existing ones are being utilized in the most effective manner possible and that we allocating the appropriate resources necessary to combat domestic extremism. A new law doesn’t help much if the resources are not appropriately allocated and we continue to be hampered by perceptions that tend to minimize or deny the extent of this problem which is clearly a longstanding one.

Q: ­In domestic extremist groups in the U.S., what percentage of individuals have military affiliation and what can be done to prevent recruitment into these groups? ­

A:  More information on extremists with military backgrounds can be found in the research brief “ Extremism in the Ranks and After .”

Q: ­On an international level, where do you think is the next area that will experience a rise of terrorism? ­

A:  Given the activities of ISIS and Al-Qaeda affiliates across the continent, Africa is one of the most concerning regions. According to the recent Global Terrorism Index, five of the top ten and eleven of the top twenty countries most impacted by terrorism are in Africa. However, I think it is also important to identify the countries where terrorism and the instability it causes may have the greatest geopolitical implications. On that criteria, I would assess the Philippines as being particularly important given ongoing peace efforts in the south, issues with China in the west Philippine Sea, and the potential for the Philippines to reposture for regional efforts if internal security threats can be addressed. As war in the Ukraine continues, it will also be important to monitor the individuals and groups traveling to fight on either side of the conflict and the potential implications for terrorist threats. 

Q: Can someone speak to the relationship to underlying criminogenic (as seen in the criminal justice arena) needs and extremist growth in the U.S.?­

A:  More information on the relationship of violent extremism to crime can be found in the research brief “ Pre-Radicalization Criminal Activity of United States Extremists .”

Q: Don you think that charisma should not be studied separately from the audiences' ideals? A terrorist, mobilizing his audiences, needs to connect his goals and ideals with the audiences' goals to succeed.­

A:  Absolutely. For scholars of charismatic leadership, 'charisma' is not a trait but rather the emotion-based bond between leader and followers. It is not enough for the leader to be extraordinary, that needs to be recognised by the followers as a reason to legitimize that person as an authority figure. This is why the charismatic leader-follower relationship is often described as mutually empowering (although asymmetric) because while the charismatic leader shapes how followers see the world and behave in it, their authority comes from the followers and the maintenance of those charisma bonds. 

Q: Do you think that the military experience itself instills and cultivates new values and ideals which 'must' be adopted and demonstrated in order for a military officer/NCO to succeed in their career? The seeds or planting phase may not have started in the 'civilian life' period. Researchers know about the 'obedience' dilemma in military context, particularly in war times. The 'peril of obedience' discourse or from Milgram's obedience study may suggest this. Also, is linguistic evidence of certain values from discourse analysis of military commanders' speeches given to their soldiers in preparing them for war in Iraq, for example.­­

A:  Before Milgram, Zimbardo, and Asch, were Adorno and Allport. We are not advocating for a certain personality (although there is research demonstrating an increase in authoritarian scores among service members, especially if they voluntarily entered military service), but contextualizing the influence process throughout the military lifecycle. What we meant by planting/forming is that initial exposure to hate rhetoric (and perhaps even violence) occurs prior to military service.    

Q: ­How should civilian agencies be looking for and trying to address DVE in their workforce?­

A:  Currently there are no identified evidence-based approaches to preventing domestic violent extremism in the workplace. This represents a major, yet understandable, research gap. Nevertheless, based on several theories on what factors lead to DVE, there are things that can be done in the workplace to interrupt the processes that lead to DVE. These include among others, assigning workers meaningful tasks and reducing the stress or the workplace by keeping workers informed of what is going on in the workplace and involving workers in key work-related decisions. Such actions convey to the worker that they are valued and that they perform a value service to the company. There are many other actions that can be taken, yet these have the most evidence from the organizational literature for making employees feel appreciated and wanted.

Disclaimer:

Opinions or points of view expressed in these recordings represent those of the speakers and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. Any commercial products and manufacturers discussed in these recordings are presented for informational purposes only and do not constitute product approval or endorsement by the U.S. Department of Justice.

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Terrorism: Introduction

Learning objectives.

• Students will be able to define the basic elements of terrorism including commonalities amongst terrorist groups as well as the use of the media to promote their ideology.
• Students should complete Parts 1 and 2 of the guided reading handout.
• From worksheet - Why is terrorism difficult to define? What is the common definition? What are some motivations for terrorism?
• Note: This section will help students more clearly define terror in recent years. They will look at data related to incidents in both the United States and globally. They will also identify some of the more notable terror attacks that have taken place around the world in recent years.
• Students should take notes on Part 4 of the guided reading handout.
• How are domestic terrorism and international terrorism defined differently in U.S. law?  
• Has the threat from terrorism increased, decreased, or remained steady? Why do you say so? 
• How is media coverage part of terrorists’ strategy?
• Have students imagine they are terrorism experts advising a news organization on how best to cover news of terrorism. 
• How can terrorist attacks be covered responsibly, when coverage is often exactly what the terrorists want? 
• Should messages from or interviews with terrorists be published or broadcast?  
• How much should terrorism be covered as compared to other national issues? 
• NOTE: For more of a challenge, consider having students write a memo to a generic news organization, assign each student or group a real news organization and ask them to critique that organization’s reporting in their memo. This goes much more smoothly if you select a particular terrorist incident for everyone to focus on, because students will find it easier to navigate the news archives if they are looking for a specific incident.

a war among groups inside of one country. 

the set of policies and actions—including intelligence collection and analysis, military action, and homeland security measures—designed to combat terrorism.

individuals or groups that do not belong to or act on behalf of a country.

the process by which individuals come to adopt extreme religious, political, or social beliefs.

a period of economic downturn, usually marked when an economy shrinks instead of grows for at least six consecutive months.

defined by the UN Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, as someone who has fled conflict or persecution in their home country, has a reasonable fear that returning would be unsafe, and is protected by international law. In many countries, the term refugee also refers to someone who has sought and received asylum in a new country.

a tool of statecraft, frequently involving economic measures such as asset freezes and trade restrictions, used to exact a certain behavior or outcome from another party.

a type of intelligence collection that involves the systematic, and often concealed, observation of people, places, and things by visual, aural, electronic, photographic, or other methods.

Doha Declaration

Education for justice.

• Agenda Day 1
• Agenda Day 2
• Agenda Day 3
• Agenda Day 4
• Registration
• Breakout Sessions for Primary and Secondary Level
• Breakout Sessions for Tertiary Level
• E4J Youth Competition
• India - Lockdown Learners
• Chuka, Break the Silence
• The Online Zoo
• I would like a community where ...
• Staying safe online
• Let's be respectful online
• We can all be heroes
• Respect for all
• We all have rights
• A mosaic of differences
• The right thing to do
• Solving ethical dilemmas
• UNODC-UNESCO Guide for Policymakers
• UNODC-UNESCO Handbooks for Teachers
• Justice Accelerators
• Introduction
• Organized Crime
• Trafficking in Persons & Smuggling of Migrants
• Crime Prevention & Criminal Justice Reform
• Crime Prevention, Criminal Justice & SDGs
• UN Congress on Crime Prevention & Criminal Justice
• Commission on Crime Prevention & Criminal Justice
• Conference of the Parties to UNTOC
• Conference of the States Parties to UNCAC
• Rules for Simulating Crime Prevention & Criminal Justice Bodies
• Crime Prevention & Criminal Justice
• Engage with Us
• Contact Us about MUN
• Conferences Supporting E4J
• Cyberstrike
• Play for Integrity
• Running out of Time
• Zorbs Reloaded
• Developing a Rationale for Using the Video
• Previewing the Anti-Corruption Video
• Viewing the Video with a Purpose
• Post-viewing Activities
• Previewing the Firearms Video
• Rationale for Using the Video
• Previewing the Human Trafficking Video
• Previewing the Organized Crime Video
• Previewing the Video
• Criminal Justice & Crime Prevention
• Corruption & Integrity
• Human Trafficking & Migrant Smuggling
• Firearms Trafficking
• Terrorism & Violent Extremism
• Introduction & Learning Outcomes
• Corruption - Baseline Definition
• Effects of Corruption
• Deeper Meanings of Corruption
• Measuring Corruption
• Possible Class Structure
• Core Reading
• Advanced Reading
• Student Assessment
• Additional Teaching Tools
• Guidelines for Stand-Alone Course
• Appendix: How Corruption Affects the SDGs
• What is Governance?
• What is Good Governance?
• Corruption and Bad Governance
• Governance Reforms and Anti-Corruption
• Guidelines for Stand-alone Course
• Corruption and Democracy
• Corruption and Authoritarian Systems
• Hybrid Systems and Syndromes of Corruption
• The Deep Democratization Approach
• Political Parties and Political Finance
• Political Institution-building as a Means to Counter Corruption
• Manifestations and Consequences of Public Sector Corruption
• Causes of Public Sector Corruption
• Theories that Explain Corruption
• Corruption in Public Procurement
• Corruption in State-Owned Enterprises
• Responses to Public Sector Corruption
• Preventing Public Sector Corruption
• Forms & Manifestations of Private Sector Corruption
• Consequences of Private Sector Corruption
• Causes of Private Sector Corruption
• Responses to Private Sector Corruption
• Preventing Private Sector Corruption
• Collective Action & Public-Private Partnerships against Corruption
• Transparency as a Precondition
• Detection Mechanisms - Auditing and Reporting
• Whistle-blowing Systems and Protections
• Investigation of Corruption
• Introduction and Learning Outcomes
• Brief background on the human rights system
• Overview of the corruption-human rights nexus
• Impact of corruption on specific human rights
• Approaches to assessing the corruption-human rights nexus
• Human-rights based approach
• Defining sex, gender and gender mainstreaming
• Gender differences in corruption
• Theories explaining the gender–corruption nexus
• Gendered impacts of corruption
• Anti-corruption and gender mainstreaming
• Manifestations of corruption in education
• Costs of corruption in education
• Causes of corruption in education
• Fighting corruption in education
• Core terms and concepts
• The role of citizens in fighting corruption
• The role, risks and challenges of CSOs fighting corruption
• The role of the media in fighting corruption
• Access to information: a condition for citizen participation
• ICT as a tool for citizen participation in anti-corruption efforts
• Government obligations to ensure citizen participation in anti-corruption efforts
• Teaching Guide
• Brief History of Terrorism
• 19th Century Terrorism
• League of Nations & Terrorism
• United Nations & Terrorism
• Terrorist Victimization
• Exercises & Case Studies
• Radicalization & Violent Extremism
• Preventing & Countering Violent Extremism
• Drivers of Violent Extremism
• International Approaches to PVE &CVE
• Regional & Multilateral Approaches
• Defining Rule of Law
• UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy
• International Cooperation & UN CT Strategy
• Legal Sources & UN CT Strategy
• Regional & National Approaches
• International Legal Frameworks
• International Human Rights Law
• International Humanitarian Law
• International Refugee Law
• Current Challenges to International Legal Framework
• Defining Terrorism
• Criminal Justice Responses
• Treaty-based Crimes of Terrorism
• Core International Crimes
• International Courts and Tribunals
• African Region
• Inter-American Region
• Asian Region
• European Region
• Middle East & Gulf Regions
• Core Principles of IHL
• Categorization of Armed Conflict
• Classification of Persons
• IHL, Terrorism & Counter-Terrorism
• Relationship between IHL & intern. human rights law
• Limitations Permitted by Human Rights Law
• Derogation during Public Emergency
• Examples of States of Emergency & Derogations
• International Human Rights Instruments
• Regional Human Rights Instruments
• Extra-territorial Application of Right to Life
• Arbitrary Deprivation of Life
• Death Penalty
• Enforced Disappearances
• Armed Conflict Context
• International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
• Convention against Torture et al.
• International Legal Framework
• Key Contemporary Issues
• Investigative Phase
• Trial & Sentencing Phase
• Armed Conflict
• Case Studies
• Special Investigative Techniques
• Surveillance & Interception of Communications
• Privacy & Intelligence Gathering in Armed Conflict
• Accountability & Oversight of Intelligence Gathering
• Principle of Non-Discrimination
• Freedom of Religion
• Freedom of Expression
• Freedom of Assembly
• Freedom of Association
• Fundamental Freedoms
• Definition of 'Victim'
• Effects of Terrorism
• Access to Justice
• Recognition of the Victim
• Human Rights Instruments
• Criminal Justice Mechanisms
• Instruments for Victims of Terrorism
• National Approaches
• Key Challenges in Securing Reparation
• Topic 1. Contemporary issues relating to conditions conducive both to the spread of terrorism and the rule of law
• Topic 2. Contemporary issues relating to the right to life
• Topic 3. Contemporary issues relating to foreign terrorist fighters
• Topic 4. Contemporary issues relating to non-discrimination and fundamental freedoms
• Module 16: Linkages between Organized Crime and Terrorism
• Thematic Areas
• Content Breakdown
• Module Adaptation & Design Guidelines
• Teaching Methods
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introducing United Nations Standards & Norms on CPCJ vis-à-vis International Law
• 2. Scope of United Nations Standards & Norms on CPCJ
• 3. United Nations Standards & Norms on CPCJ in Operation
• 1. Definition of Crime Prevention
• 2. Key Crime Prevention Typologies
• 2. (cont.) Tonry & Farrington’s Typology
• 3. Crime Problem-Solving Approaches
• 4. What Works
• United Nations Entities
• Regional Crime Prevention Councils/Institutions
• Key Clearinghouses
• Systematic Reviews
• 1. Introduction to International Standards & Norms
• 2. Identifying the Need for Legal Aid
• 3. Key Components of the Right of Access to Legal Aid
• 4. Access to Legal Aid for Those with Specific Needs
• 5. Models for Governing, Administering and Funding Legal Aid
• 6. Models for Delivering Legal Aid Services
• 7. Roles and Responsibilities of Legal Aid Providers
• 8. Quality Assurance and Legal Aid Services
• 1. Context for Use of Force by Law Enforcement Officials
• 2. Legal Framework
• 3. General Principles of Use of Force in Law Enforcement
• 4. Use of Firearms
• 5. Use of “Less-Lethal” Weapons
• 6. Protection of Especially Vulnerable Groups
• 7. Use of Force during Assemblies
• 1. Policing in democracies & need for accountability, integrity, oversight
• 2. Key mechanisms & actors in police accountability, oversight
• 3. Crosscutting & contemporary issues in police accountability
• 1. Introducing Aims of Punishment, Imprisonment & Prison Reform
• 2. Current Trends, Challenges & Human Rights
• 3. Towards Humane Prisons & Alternative Sanctions
• 1. Aims and Significance of Alternatives to Imprisonment
• 2. Justifying Punishment in the Community
• 3. Pretrial Alternatives
• 4. Post Trial Alternatives
• 5. Evaluating Alternatives
• 1. Concept, Values and Origin of Restorative Justice
• 2. Overview of Restorative Justice Processes
• 3. How Cost Effective is Restorative Justice?
• 4. Issues in Implementing Restorative Justice
• 1. Gender-Based Discrimination & Women in Conflict with the Law
• 2. Vulnerabilities of Girls in Conflict with the Law
• 3. Discrimination and Violence against LGBTI Individuals
• 4. Gender Diversity in Criminal Justice Workforce
• 1. Ending Violence against Women
• 2. Human Rights Approaches to Violence against Women
• 3. Who Has Rights in this Situation?
• 4. What about the Men?
• 5. Local, Regional & Global Solutions to Violence against Women & Girls
• 1. Understanding the Concept of Victims of Crime
• 2. Impact of Crime, including Trauma
• 3. Right of Victims to Adequate Response to their Needs
• 4. Collecting Victim Data
• 5. Victims and their Participation in Criminal Justice Process
• 6. Victim Services: Institutional and Non-Governmental Organizations
• 7. Outlook on Current Developments Regarding Victims
• 8. Victims of Crime and International Law
• 1. The Many Forms of Violence against Children
• 2. The Impact of Violence on Children
• 3. States' Obligations to Prevent VAC and Protect Child Victims
• 4. Improving the Prevention of Violence against Children
• 5. Improving the Criminal Justice Response to VAC
• 6. Addressing Violence against Children within the Justice System
• 1. The Role of the Justice System
• 2. Convention on the Rights of the Child & International Legal Framework on Children's Rights
• 3. Justice for Children
• 4. Justice for Children in Conflict with the Law
• 5. Realizing Justice for Children
• 1a. Judicial Independence as Fundamental Value of Rule of Law & of Constitutionalism
• 1b. Main Factors Aimed at Securing Judicial Independence
• 2a. Public Prosecutors as ‘Gate Keepers’ of Criminal Justice
• 2b. Institutional and Functional Role of Prosecutors
• 2c. Other Factors Affecting the Role of Prosecutors
• Basics of Computing
• Global Connectivity and Technology Usage Trends
• Cybercrime in Brief
• Cybercrime Trends
• Cybercrime Prevention
• Offences against computer data and systems
• Computer-related offences
• Content-related offences
• The Role of Cybercrime Law
• Harmonization of Laws
• International and Regional Instruments
• International Human Rights and Cybercrime Law
• Digital Evidence
• Digital Forensics
• Standards and Best Practices for Digital Forensics
• Reporting Cybercrime
• Who Conducts Cybercrime Investigations?
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• Knowledge Management
• Legal and Ethical Obligations
• Handling of Digital Evidence
• Digital Evidence Admissibility
• Sovereignty and Jurisdiction
• Formal International Cooperation Mechanisms
• Informal International Cooperation Mechanisms
• Data Retention, Preservation and Access
• Challenges Relating to Extraterritorial Evidence
• National Capacity and International Cooperation
• Internet Governance
• Cybersecurity Strategies: Basic Features
• National Cybersecurity Strategies
• International Cooperation on Cybersecurity Matters
• Cybersecurity Posture
• Assets, Vulnerabilities and Threats
• Vulnerability Disclosure
• Cybersecurity Measures and Usability
• Situational Crime Prevention
• Incident Detection, Response, Recovery & Preparedness
• Privacy: What it is and Why it is Important
• Privacy and Security
• Cybercrime that Compromises Privacy
• Data Protection Legislation
• Data Breach Notification Laws
• Enforcement of Privacy and Data Protection Laws
• Intellectual Property: What it is
• Types of Intellectual Property
• Causes for Cyber-Enabled Copyright & Trademark Offences
• Protection & Prevention Efforts
• Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse
• Cyberstalking and Cyberharassment
• Cyberbullying
• Gender-Based Interpersonal Cybercrime
• Interpersonal Cybercrime Prevention
• Cyber Organized Crime: What is it?
• Conceptualizing Organized Crime & Defining Actors Involved
• Criminal Groups Engaging in Cyber Organized Crime
• Cyber Organized Crime Activities
• Preventing & Countering Cyber Organized Crime
• Cyberespionage
• Cyberterrorism
• Cyberwarfare
• Information Warfare, Disinformation & Electoral Fraud
• Responses to Cyberinterventions
• Framing the Issue of Firearms
• Direct Impact of Firearms
• Indirect Impacts of Firearms on States or Communities
• International and National Responses
• Typology and Classification of Firearms
• Common Firearms Types
• 'Other' Types of Firearms
• Parts and Components
• History of the Legitimate Arms Market
• Need for a Legitimate Market
• Key Actors in the Legitimate Market
• Authorized & Unauthorized Arms Transfers
• Illegal Firearms in Social, Cultural & Political Context
• Supply, Demand & Criminal Motivations
• Larger Scale Firearms Trafficking Activities
• Smaller Scale Trafficking Activities
• Sources of Illicit Firearms
• Consequences of Illicit Markets
• International Public Law & Transnational Law
• International Instruments with Global Outreach
• Commonalities, Differences & Complementarity between Global Instruments
• Tools to Support Implementation of Global Instruments
• Other United Nations Processes
• The Sustainable Development Goals
• Multilateral & Regional Instruments
• Scope of National Firearms Regulations
• National Firearms Strategies & Action Plans
• Harmonization of National Legislation with International Firearms Instruments
• Assistance for Development of National Firearms Legislation
• Firearms Trafficking as a Cross-Cutting Element
• Organized Crime and Organized Criminal Groups
• Criminal Gangs
• Terrorist Groups
• Interconnections between Organized Criminal Groups & Terrorist Groups
• Gangs - Organized Crime & Terrorism: An Evolving Continuum
• International Response
• International and National Legal Framework
• Firearms Related Offences
• Role of Law Enforcement
• Firearms as Evidence
• Use of Special Investigative Techniques
• International Cooperation and Information Exchange
• Prosecution and Adjudication of Firearms Trafficking
• Teaching Methods & Principles
• Ethical Learning Environments
• Overview of Modules
• Module Adaption & Design Guidelines
• Table of Exercises
• Basic Terms
• Forms of Gender Discrimination
• Ethics of Care
• Case Studies for Professional Ethics
• Case Studies for Role Morality
• Additional Exercises
• Defining Organized Crime
• Definition in Convention
• Similarities & Differences
• Activities, Organization, Composition
• Thinking Critically Through Fiction
• Excerpts of Legislation
• Research & Independent Study Questions
• Legal Definitions of Organized Crimes
• Criminal Association
• Definitions in the Organized Crime Convention
• Criminal Organizations and Enterprise Laws
• Enabling Offence: Obstruction of Justice
• Drug Trafficking
• Wildlife & Forest Crime
• Counterfeit Products Trafficking
• Falsified Medical Products
• Trafficking in Cultural Property
• Trafficking in Persons
• Case Studies & Exercises
• Extortion Racketeering
• Loansharking
• Links to Corruption
• Bribery versus Extortion
• Money-Laundering
• Liability of Legal Persons
• How much Organized Crime is there?
• Alternative Ways for Measuring
• Measuring Product Markets
• Risk Assessment
• Key Concepts of Risk Assessment
• Risk Assessment of Organized Crime Groups
• Risk Assessment of Product Markets
• Risk Assessment in Practice
• Positivism: Environmental Influences
• Classical: Pain-Pleasure Decisions
• Structural Factors
• Ethical Perspective
• Crime Causes & Facilitating Factors
• Models and Structure
• Hierarchical Model
• Local, Cultural Model
• Enterprise or Business Model
• Groups vs Activities
• Networked Structure
• Jurisdiction
• Investigators of Organized Crime
• Controlled Deliveries
• Physical & Electronic Surveillance
• Undercover Operations
• Financial Analysis
• Use of Informants
• Rights of Victims & Witnesses
• Role of Prosecutors
• Adversarial vs Inquisitorial Legal Systems
• Mitigating Punishment
• Granting Immunity from Prosecution
• Witness Protection
• Aggravating & Mitigating Factors
• Sentencing Options
• Alternatives to Imprisonment
• Death Penalty & Organized Crime
• Backgrounds of Convicted Offenders
• Confiscation
• Confiscation in Practice
• Mutual Legal Assistance (MLA)
• Extradition
• Transfer of Criminal Proceedings
• Transfer of Sentenced Persons
• Module 12: Prevention of Organized Crime
• Adoption of Organized Crime Convention
• Historical Context
• Features of the Convention
• Related international instruments
• Conference of the Parties
• Roles of Participants
• Structure and Flow
• Recommended Topics
• Background Materials
• What is Sex / Gender / Intersectionality?
• Knowledge about Gender in Organized Crime
• Gender and Organized Crime
• Gender and Different Types of Organized Crime
• Definitions and Terminology
• Organized crime and Terrorism - International Legal Framework
• International Terrorism-related Conventions
• UNSC Resolutions on Terrorism
• Organized Crime Convention and its Protocols
• Theoretical Frameworks on Linkages between Organized Crime and Terrorism
• Typologies of Criminal Behaviour Associated with Terrorism
• Terrorism and Drug Trafficking
• Terrorism and Trafficking in Weapons
• Terrorism, Crime and Trafficking in Cultural Property
• Trafficking in Persons and Terrorism
• Intellectual Property Crime and Terrorism
• Kidnapping for Ransom and Terrorism
• Exploitation of Natural Resources and Terrorism
• Review and Assessment Questions
• Research and Independent Study Questions
• Criminalization of Smuggling of Migrants
• UNTOC & the Protocol against Smuggling of Migrants
• Offences under the Protocol
• Financial & Other Material Benefits
• Aggravating Circumstances
• Criminal Liability
• Non-Criminalization of Smuggled Migrants
• Scope of the Protocol
• Humanitarian Exemption
• Migrant Smuggling v. Irregular Migration
• Migrant Smuggling vis-a-vis Other Crime Types
• Other Resources
• Assistance and Protection in the Protocol
• International Human Rights and Refugee Law
• Vulnerable groups
• Positive and Negative Obligations of the State
• Identification of Smuggled Migrants
• Participation in Legal Proceedings
• Role of Non-Governmental Organizations
• Smuggled Migrants & Other Categories of Migrants
• Short-, Mid- and Long-Term Measures
• Criminal Justice Reponse: Scope
• Investigative & Prosecutorial Approaches
• Different Relevant Actors & Their Roles
• Testimonial Evidence
• Financial Investigations
• Non-Governmental Organizations
• ‘Outside the Box’ Methodologies
• Intra- and Inter-Agency Coordination
• Admissibility of Evidence
• International Cooperation
• Exchange of Information
• Non-Criminal Law Relevant to Smuggling of Migrants
• Administrative Approach
• Complementary Activities & Role of Non-criminal Justice Actors
• Macro-Perspective in Addressing Smuggling of Migrants
• Human Security
• International Aid and Cooperation
• Migration & Migrant Smuggling
• Mixed Migration Flows
• Social Politics of Migrant Smuggling
• Vulnerability
• Profile of Smugglers
• Role of Organized Criminal Groups
• Humanitarianism, Security and Migrant Smuggling
• Crime of Trafficking in Persons
• The Issue of Consent
• The Purpose of Exploitation
• The abuse of a position of vulnerability
• Indicators of Trafficking in Persons
• Distinction between Trafficking in Persons and Other Crimes
• Misconceptions Regarding Trafficking in Persons
• Root Causes
• Supply Side Prevention Strategies
• Demand Side Prevention Strategies
• Role of the Media
• Safe Migration Channels
• Crime Prevention Strategies
• Monitoring, Evaluating & Reporting on Effectiveness of Prevention
• Trafficked Persons as Victims
• Protection under the Protocol against Trafficking in Persons
• Broader International Framework
• State Responsibility for Trafficking in Persons
• Identification of Victims
• Principle of Non-Criminalization of Victims
• Criminal Justice Duties Imposed on States
• Role of the Criminal Justice System
• Current Low Levels of Prosecutions and Convictions
• Challenges to an Effective Criminal Justice Response
• Rights of Victims to Justice and Protection
• Potential Strategies to “Turn the Tide”
• State Cooperation with Civil Society
• Civil Society Actors
• The Private Sector
• Comparing SOM and TIP
• Differences and Commonalities
• Vulnerability and Continuum between SOM & TIP
• Labour Exploitation
• Forced Marriage
• Other Examples
• Children on the Move
• Protecting Smuggled and Trafficked Children
• Protection in Practice
• Children Alleged as Having Committed Smuggling or Trafficking Offences
• Basic Terms - Gender and Gender Stereotypes
• International Legal Frameworks and Definitions of TIP and SOM
• Global Overview on TIP and SOM
• Gender and Migration
• Key Debates in the Scholarship on TIP and SOM
• Gender and TIP and SOM Offenders
• Responses to TIP and SOM
• Use of Technology to Facilitate TIP and SOM
• Technology Facilitating Trafficking in Persons
• Technology in Smuggling of Migrants
• Using Technology to Prevent and Combat TIP and SOM
• Privacy and Data Concerns
• Emerging Trends
• Demand and Consumption
• Supply and Demand
• Implications of Wildlife Trafficking
• Legal and Illegal Markets
• Perpetrators and their Networks
• Locations and Activities relating to Wildlife Trafficking
• Environmental Protection & Conservation
• CITES & the International Trade in Endangered Species
• Organized Crime & Corruption
• Animal Welfare
• Criminal Justice Actors and Agencies
• Criminalization of Wildlife Trafficking
• Challenges for Law Enforcement
• Investigation Measures and Detection Methods
• Prosecution and Judiciary
• Wild Flora as the Target of Illegal Trafficking
• Purposes for which Wild Flora is Illegally Targeted
• How is it Done and Who is Involved?
• Consequences of Harms to Wild Flora
• Terminology
• Background: Communities and conservation: A history of disenfranchisement
• Incentives for communities to get involved in illegal wildlife trafficking: the cost of conservation
• Incentives to participate in illegal wildlife, logging and fishing economies
• International and regional responses that fight wildlife trafficking while supporting IPLCs
• Mechanisms for incentivizing community conservation and reducing wildlife trafficking
• Critiques of community engagement
• Other challenges posed by wildlife trafficking that affect local populations
• Global Podcast Series
• Apr. 2021: Call for Expressions of Interest: Online training for academics from francophone Africa
• Feb. 2021: Series of Seminars for Universities of Central Asia
• Dec. 2020: UNODC and TISS Conference on Access to Justice to End Violence
• Nov. 2020: Expert Workshop for University Lecturers and Trainers from the Commonwealth of Independent States
• Oct. 2020: E4J Webinar Series: Youth Empowerment through Education for Justice
• Interview: How to use E4J's tool in teaching on TIP and SOM
• E4J-Open University Online Training-of-Trainers Course
• Teaching Integrity and Ethics Modules: Survey Results
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• Counter-Terrorism

Module 4: Criminal Justice Responses to Terrorism

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E4J University Module Series: Counter-Terrorism

Introduction and learning outcomes, defining terrorism.

• Criminal justice responses
• Treaty-based crimes of terrorism - universal counter terrorism instruments
• Core international crimes
• International courts and tribunals

Exercises and case studies

Possible class structure, core reading, advanced reading, student assessment, additional teaching tools.

Published in July 2018.

  This module is a resource for lecturers  

Before examining the meaning and associated concepts and principles of (international) criminal justice and international criminal law as they apply to terrorist crimes, it is first necessary to briefly examine some of the principal reasons for, and implications of, the absence of a universally agreed definition of terrorism, including how key institutional and State actors have approached criminal justice solutions in the absence of one.

As was discussed in Module 1 , the concept of "terror" is not a new one, having existed in different forms for centuries. The reasons for this are many. There are a number of possible explanations for this, some of which are explored below in relation to ongoing efforts to agree on a Comprehensive Convention.

Customary definition of terrorism

Although there is no current agreement regarding of a universal legal definition of the term, there has been some debate regarding the possible existence of an, at least partial, customary definition of terrorism. This followed the somewhat controversial judgment of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon in 2011, which found that since at least 2005, a definition of "transnational terrorism" has existed within customary international law:

As we shall see, a number of treaties, UN resolutions, and the legislative and judicial practice of States evince the formation of a general opinio juris in the international community, accompanied by a practice consistent with such opinio, to the effect that a customary rule of international law regarding the international crime of terrorism, at least in time of peace, has indeed emerged. This customary rule requires the following three key elements: (i) the perpetration of a criminal act (such as murder, kidnapping, hostage-taking, arson, and so on), or threatening such an act; (ii) the intent to spread fear among the population (which would generally entail the creation of public danger) or directly or indirectly coerce a national or international authority to take some action, or to refrain from taking it; (iii) when the act involves a transnational element. ( Interlocutory Decision , 2011, para. 85).

In reaching such a finding, the Tribunal relied primarily upon relevant United Nations policies, practices, and norms, including those of the General Assembly, as well as upon national and international jurisprudence. Furthermore, it was stated by the Tribunal that the necessary substantive (objective and subjective) elements for two other classes of terrorist criminal conduct also existed within international law: war crimes committed in the course of international or non-international armed conflict; and those acts crossing the threshold to constitute crimes against humanity, whether perpetrated during peace time or armed conflict.

While the existence (although not necessarily the interpretation) of the latter two categories of offences are non-contentious and well established within international law (including treaties and related jurisprudence), the existence of a peacetime international crime within customary international law is not widely regarded as being settled. Certainly, whenever terrorism terminology is referred to within a United Nations instrument, such as a resolution, it should not be understood as implying the existence of a customary definition. Notably, as will be seen, the General Assembly Declaration on measures to eliminate international terrorism (resolution 49/60) requires a political purpose, but the draft Comprehensive Convention does not. Meanwhile Security Council Resolution 1566 (2004) focuses on reiterating sectoral offences, does not incorporate all forms of terrorism, and does not require any special intent or motive.

The Tribunal's ruling, together with its underlying legal basis, were significantly criticized and not widely accepted, including for not meeting the necessary legal threshold tests in terms of state practice and opinio juris . As leading commentator Ben Saul noted at the time:

While there are numerous sector-specific treaties which address particular criminal means and methods used by terrorists, none of [the treaties referred to by the Special Tribunal] - individually or collectively - contains a comprehensive definition of terrorism or establishes a general international crime of transnational "terrorism". At most, specific offences in some treaties may have entered into customary law, such as aircraft hijacking or hostage taking. In the absence of a general crime of terrorism in treaty law, no parallel customary rule can arise out of those treaties. The sectoral approach was adopted precisely because states could not reach agreement on 'terrorism' as such. (Saul, 2012, p. lxxi).

Indeed, as Saul further comments, although the Tribunal sought to rely on regional instruments against terrorism as partial evidence of support for its findings, a correct reading of them in fact reveals that no agreement exists regarding a common definition of terrorism (Saul, 2012, p. lxxi), as was illustrated above. More generally, the consensus seems to be that a customary definition of terrorism is potentially evolving, but that its existence was declared prematurely by the Special Tribunal.

Implications of the absence of a universal definition of terrorism

The implications of the absence of a universal definition of terrorism for legal purposes are wide-ranging. One is that the lack of a definition may faciliate the politicization and misuse of the term "terrorism" to curb non-terrorist (or sometimes even non-criminal) activities. In turn, this can result in States, e.g., violating the rights of their own or other States' citizens, such as those of international human rights law, in the course of their counter-terrorism efforts.

Where domestic laws also suffer from ambiguity as to their full reach and meaning in terms of the activities criminalized and the implications thereof, such laws can offend the principle of legality, or nullum crimen, nulla poena sine lege . This maxim requires that a person should not face criminal trial or punishment under domestic or international criminal law except for an act that was criminalized at the time the act was allegedly committed, meaning that a criminal law cannot be applied retroactively. Of particular interest here, an inherent aspect of this legal principle is that there should be certainty in the law such that the criminalized acts and their accompanying penalties are clearly defined, without doubt or ambiguity, prior to their alleged commission.

Another significant issue has been the lack of harmonization between national and regional laws and normative standards on countering terrorism. As was discussed in Module 3 , following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Security Council adopted Resolution 1373 (2001), which required States to take effective national legislative action as part of their global efforts to counter terrorism more effectively. Although, on the one hand, this obligated States to take legislative action, in the absence of a universally agreed definition of terrorism, the result has been a mixed legislative response and approach by Member States, sometimes with the potential to hinder rather than facilitate international cooperation.

United Nations approach

Within the United Nations system, in the absence of a universally agreed definition of the term, various terminology describing the notion of "terrorism" can be found within its outputs. These are not generally intended to suggest the existence of an agreed definition of terrorism (although, ultimately, that is one of the sought but currently elusive goals of the draft Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism (Comprehensive Convention) discussed below). Instead, they are intended to act as guidance benchmarks to assist States in, e.g., carrying out actions requested or required by particular outputs and instruments. Various examples are considered here by way of illustration, drawing from a number of different sources.

The first example is General Assembly resolution 49/60, which seeks to criminalize a number of armed activities considered to be "terrorist" in nature:

[A]cts intended or calculated to provoke a state of terror in the general public, a group of persons or particular persons for political purposes are in any circumstance unjustifiable, whatever the considerations of a political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or any other nature that may be invoked to justify them. (Para. 3).

A particular strength of this approach is that it was adopted by consensus, meaning without a vote, by the General Assembly. Therefore, it enjoys a high level of legitimacy as the outcome of the fully representational forum of the General Assembly and thus remains influential. As an output of the General Assembly, however, it is not binding in nature. This conclusion is further evidenced by the fact that it has not yet been possible to agree on a universal definition in the context of the ongoing negotiations regarding the draft Comprehensive Convention. Certainly, General Assembly resolution 49/60 recognized the need for the progressive development and codification of anti-terrorism norms (para. 12). For such reasons, though resolution 49/60 remains important and influential, including through the annual re-adoption by the General Assembly of its "measures to eliminate terrorism" resolutions, any potential law-making role remains unclear.

Another example of "terrorism" related terminology is Resolution 1566 (2004), which aimed to assist States in meeting their obligations under Security Council Resolution 1373 (2001) to take domestic legislative action. It refers to "terrorism" as:

... criminal acts, including against civilians, committed with intent to cause death or serious bodily injury, or taking of hostages, with the purpose to provoke a state of terror in the general public or in a group of persons or particular persons, intimidate a population or compel a government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act, which constitute offences within the scope of and as defined in the international conventions and protocols relating to terrorism, are under no circumstances justifiable by considerations of a political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or other similar nature, and calls upon all States to prevent such acts and, if not prevented, to ensure that such acts are punished by penalties consistent with their grave nature. (Para. 3).

Adopted by the Security Council under Chapter VII, potentially the argument could be made that the resolution is legally binding on all Member States. In practice, however, any such suggestion - e.g., that an accompanying obligation exists to accept and implement a particular definition of "terrorism" - is likely to be strongly rejected by States. (See further Security Council, Counter-Terrorism Committee survey S/2016/50). That said, Resolution 1566 has played an important role in influencing and assisting in the harmonization of some definitions of terrorism within national laws. It has also been significant in terms of closing gaps regarding such offences within domestic criminal frameworks (Young, 2006) and forms part of the body of norms influencing how terrorism offences are categorized and dealt with today.

A further approach (considered below) exists within the context of the draft Comprehensive Convention article 2. Once again, some important differences can be discerned between the terminology used here compared with those employed by the General Assembly and Security Council. On the one hand, it is clearer in scope than the General Assembly's Declaration of 1994 and Security Council Resolution 1566 in expressly referring to property damage as part of the criminal act. On the other hand, it is less extensive in articulating the grounds which will never justify terrorist acts. This may be attributable, at least in part, to the fact that as a potentially legally binding treaty the draft Comprehensive Convention is subject to a more rigorous process of negotiation and scrutiny compared with resolutions.

More generally, as is examined in some detail below, most universal anti-terrorism instruments do not contain a definition of terrorism due to its accompanying political sensitivities. One notable exception though is the example discussed here of article 2 of the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism of 1999. This provision criminalizes terrorism financing in the following terms:

1. Any person commits an offence within the meaning of this Convention if that person by any means, directly or indirectly, unlawfully and wilfully, provides or collects funds with the intention that they should be used or in the knowledge that they are to be used, in full or in part, in order to carry out:

(a) An act which constitutes an offence within the scope of and as defined in one of the treaties listed in the annex; or

(b) Any other act intended to cause death or serious bodily injury to a civilian, or to any other person not taking an active part in the hostilities in a situation of armed conflict, when the purpose of such act, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a population, or to compel a government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act.

This text was reaffirmed by Security Council Resolution 1373 (2001), which called upon all States to "[b]ecome parties as soon as possible to the relevant international conventions and protocols relating to terrorism, including the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism of 9 December 1999." (Para. 3(d)).

Regional and national approaches

In addition to States, many regional organizations have counter-terrorism instruments (see Module 5 ), which contain their own definitions of terrorism that reflect regional priorities. The same issues, however, have arisen in relation to many of these definitions as for national approaches, namely that their inter-regional divergence in approach has the potential to impede rather than facilitate wider international cooperation among their membership. In addition, important differences in definitional approaches can arise between regional organizations and those of their individual Member States. In turn, these can pose conflict of law challenges regarding which rule should prevail - treaty law or domestic law - in the event of inconsistencies between two sets of rules which cannot be reconciled. (See further Charter of the United Nations 1945, article 103; Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties 1969, article 30). Generally, including under the principle of incorporation discussed in Module 3 , domestic law will prevail in practice, including for constitutional reasons.

The following table outlines the principal definitional approaches of those regional organizations examined in Module 5. None are suggested to represent a universally agreed definition of terrorism within the United Nations system.

As has been mentioned, there are numerous examples, where the term terrorism has been defined at a national level in the absence of agreement regarding a universal definition. Some examples of different national approaches are included in the suggested reading for this module.

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Supported by the state of qatar, 60 years crime congress.

Security Council examines rising terrorism threat globally

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A UN Security Council meeting on Thursday focused on terrorism began with a sobering reminder of the danger posed by this persistent threat to international peace. 

India’s External Affairs Minister, Dr. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, who chaired the meeting, invited participants to stand and observe a minute of silence for victims worldwide. 

United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism December 15, 2022

They include an Irish peacekeeper serving at the UN’s mission in Lebanon, UNIFIL , shot and killed in an attack the previous night. Three other blue helmets were also injured; one critically. 

Widespread and prevalent 

The global threat posed by terrorism not only requires the Council’s continued attention, but also a renewed collective approach, said Vladimir Voronkov, head of the UN Office on Counter Terrorism (UNOCT). 

“Despite continuing leadership losses by Al-Qaida and Da’esh [also known as ISIL], terrorism in general has become more prevalent and more geographically widespread, affecting the lives of millions worldwide,” he reported. 

Mr. Voronkov said these groups and their affiliates have continued to exploit instability, fragility and conflict , particularly in areas such as West Africa and the Sahel, where the situation remains urgent. 

Their operations have also contributed to the deteriorating security situation in Central and Southern Africa, and elsewhere on the content. 

Terrorist groups remain in Afghanistan, where they continue to pose serious threats to the region and beyond. 

Xenophobic terror attacks rising 

“Moreover, it is concerning that the de facto authorities have failed to sever long-standing ties with terrorist groups sheltering in the country, despite this Council’s demands that they do so,” he added. 

Terrorists are “adapting opportunistically”, said Mr. Voronkov.  They are resorting to illicit financing methods and other criminal activities, making it difficult to produce an coordinated international response. 

He also expressed concern over a rise in terrorist attacks based on xenophobia, racism and other forms of intolerance , or in the name of religion or belief . 

“While not a new phenomenon, a few Member States consider this as the fastest growing or even the most prominent domestic security threat that they face,” he said. 

Pledge of support 

Mr. Voronkov welcomed a special meeting of the UN Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC), held last month in India, to review how terrorists are taking advantage of new and emerging technologies for their own illegal ends. 

Discussions centred around three areas: the Internet, including social media platforms and related online spaces; countering terrorism financing and new payment technologies, and the misuse of unmanned aerial systems. 

“The special meeting brought to the forefront overarching considerations of a ‘One-UN’ approach, upholding human rights, the role of civil society, and honouring the victims of terrorism,” said Weixiong Chen, acting chief of the Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate (CTED). 

“The Committee adopted the Delhi Declaration to reaffirm its commitment to work with Member States in achieving full implementation of all relevant Security Council resolutions to address the threats posed by terrorism,” he added. 

Courage amid chaos 

The CTC meeting was held over two days in Delhi and Mumbai, where terrorists carried out a series of bombing and shooting attacks 14 years ago, spanning four days.  More than 30 people were killed, and scores more wounded. 

Briefing the Council, Anjali Vijay Kulthe, a veteran staff nurse at the Cama and Albless Hospital in Mumbai, recalled that she was on night duty in the antenatal unit on 26 November 2008. 

Two terrorists scaled the wall of the facility, which is exclusively dedicated to mothers and children. They entered the hospital, and she could hear shooting.   

Ms. Kulthe was with two assistants at the time, and 20 women in advanced stages of pregnancy. Though riddled with fear, she guided everyone to safety.  They sheltered in the hospital pantry, in darkness. 

“I shiver even today as I recall the night of terrorist attack. While the terrorists were killing human beings like insects, I am happy that I was able to save the lives of 20 pregnant women and their unborn babies,” she said, speaking through an interpreter. 

Appeal for action 

A month later, the brave nurse was summoned to identify the lone surviving terrorist from the attacks. Although her family feared reprisals, she went ahead.  

The terrorist, Ajmal Kasab, “did not have an iota of remorse, no shame, no guilt; his sense of victory haunts me even today,” she revealed. 

“Whenever I see news reports on television about terrorist attacks anywhere in the world, my heart goes out for the victims, and survivors of such attacks who live the rest of their lives in trauma,” said Ms. Kulthe. 

She urged the international to bring the sponsors of the Mumbai attacks to justice and give closure to the families of the victims. 

Address root causes 

Ireland’s Foreign Minister, Simon Coveney expressed his deep sadness and shock at the death of the country’s young peacekeeper in Lebanon, and the injuries to his colleagues. 

“The incident and the loss of life is a stark reminder that our peacekeepers serve in dangerous circumstances, at all times , in the cause of peace,” he said. 

Mr. Coveney told the Council that prevention is the most effective way to counter terrorism, which means tackling the complex and varied factors that drive it. 

“We know that communities affected by conflict, poverty, inequality, poor governance, and human rights violations are more vulnerable to radicalisation and recruitment,” he said. 

“Unless we address the root causes, we resign ourselves to addressing the same security challenges over and over again.” 

At the end of the meeting, the Security Council issued a statement condemning terrorism in all its forms and manifestations.

The Council expressed condolences to the families of persons killed in terrorist acts, and underlined support for survivors and victims.

Members stressed the need to promote and protect the rights of victims of terrorism, including women and children, and reaffirmed their profound solidarity with them and with countries that have suffered terrorist attacks.

• security council

A Department of Homeland Security Emeritus Center of Excellence led by the University of Maryland

A consortium of researchers dedicated to improving the understanding of the human causes and consequences of terrorism

Profiles of perpetrators of terrorism in the united states (ppt-us).

PPT-US includes detailed information on organizations known to have engaged in terrorist activity against targets on the U.S. homeland between 1970 and 2015. Data included for each organization includes information on its terrorist attacks, its history and base of operations, its ideology and goals, its engagement in political and criminal activities (other than terrorism), its alliances, its network and structure, and its financial resources. PPT-US includes information on the source used to code each variable in the data set, and also includes a confidence indicator for each variable (high v. medium v. low), which reflects the reliability of the source upon which coding was based. PPT-US will be updated on a regular basis, as new information on terrorist attacks in the United States becomes available.

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Preventing Terrorism and Targeted Violence

Protecting the American people from terrorist threats is the reason DHS was created, and remains our highest priority.

Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships

The Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships (CP3) works to build partnerships and provides grant funding, training, technical assistance and increased public awareness of targeted violence and terrorism prevention (TVTP) across every level of government, the private sector, and in local communities. CP3 convenes TVTP providers, curates TVTP research and best practices, and helps states and communities to build TVTP strategies and prevention programs.

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Preventing Terrorism Overview

Protecting the American people from terrorist threats is the reason the Department of Homeland Security was created, and remains our highest priority.

Preventing Terrorism Results

Protecting the United States from terrorism is the founding mission of DHS. While America is stronger and more resilient as a result of a strengthened homeland security enterprise, terrorist threats persist and continue to evolve.

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The United States faces a rising danger from terrorists and rogue states seeking to use weapons of mass destruction.  A weapon of mass destruction is a nuclear, radiological, chemical, biological, or other device that is intended to harm a large number of people.  The Department of Homeland Security works every day to prevent terrorists and other threat actors from using these weapons to harm Americans.

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