terrorism

Once a grievance and possible weapons are identified, ascertaining possible targets is certainly possible if analysts and practitioners allow themselves to examine the threat from the terrorists’ perspective. Doing so will allow government leaders to make informed decisions regarding the allocation of finite resources in a way best suited to defend their citizens and their way of life.

The rise of terror attacks across the United Kingdom (UK) has been a harsh wake up call for the nation to re-evaluate its strategy for countering terrorism, known as CONTEST. Its first version was produced in 2003, with updated revisions in 2009 and 2011. Since 2011, the UK has suffered seven deadly terror attacks stemming from both far right wing and Islamic inspired extremism.

‘Terrorism’ and ‘insurgency’ describe inherently divergent methods of political violence. Although the label itself ought not to infer any analytical proscriptions, the misidentification of a threat can drastically undermine policy intended to counter it.

In counterterrorism, the interrogation of high-value targets (HVTs) can be difficult. Rapport building can be near impossible because HVTs may be determined not to talk regardless of the approach strategies used by the interrogator. If these unconventional HVTs were members of a conventional military, it would be said that they possessed a high degree of resistance training.

As outlined in this report, I chose a specific terrorist organization, Al Qaeda, and analyzed the role that they played in cyberterrorism. Throughout the paper, I discussed how the terrorist organization utilized the internet to indoctrinate as well as recruit likeminded extremist individuals, delved into how Al Qaeda used the internet to conduct cyberterrorism, included some insight into how this particular terrorist organization’s activities effect the larger topic of cybersecurity, and touched on what the future of Al Qaeda could be in the cyber realm. Hopefully, after reading this paper, people will not dismiss Al Qaeda’s cyberterrorist capabilities or underestimate them while they are probably in the process of refining their credibility in cyberspace.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant is the most rapidly advancing terrorist group of the past five years. The problem is that it is not a terrorist group at all. Just because a group commits grave atrocities and “terrorizes” citizen populations does not make it a terrorist group. That is not what terrorism means.

There is a lack of clear causation between the holy month and terrorist attacks. Although individual months of Ramadan have been especially violent, the fact that they are rarely the most violent months of the year shows that to claim a clear causation is inaccurate.

The death of Osama bin Laden ended one of the longest manhunts in U.S. history and was a satisfying moment for all those who had participated in the decades-long endeavor, but it did not result in the dissolution of al-Qaeda. Unlike many terror groups, al-Qaeda is a many-headed organization, making it capable of surviving even the death of its founder.

Recent trends in the use of weapons by terrorist, extremist or violent attackers points to a dynamic field of options, representing a spectrum from the highly complex to the simple weaponization of common everyday items. Rather than a linear progression from the simple to the complex, or devolution from the complex to the simple, there is an elastic set of polar options, that attackers range between.