The Targeter My Life in the CIA Hunting Terrorists and Challenging the White House, Nada Bakos, New America, DC
The Targeter
My Life in the CIA Hunting Terrorists and Challenging the White House
Event
In 1999, Nada Bakos moved from her lifelong home in Montana to Washington, DC, to join the CIA. In her new book The Targeter: My Life in the CIA Hunting Terrorists and Challenging the White House, Bakos takes the reader from Langley deep into Iraq, explaining the inner workings of the intelligence community after 9/11, and her role finding the godfather of ISIS and mastermind of al Qaida in Iraq: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Along the way, Bakos explores other issues from the sisterhood entrenched in a predominantly male world of the CIA that led Special Operations Forces to the doorsteps of wanted terrorists to her effort to improve the intelligence in the lead up to the Iraq war.
Nada Bakos, in addition to being the author of The Targeter, is a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. As a CIA analyst, the subject of her new book, she was a key member of the team charged with analyzing the relationship between Iraq, al-Qaeda, and the 9/11 attacks, and also served as the Chief Targeting Officer tracking Zarqawi.
Join New America’s International Security Program as it welcomes Nada Bakos for a discussion of the hunt for Zarqawi and intelligence operations in the war on terror.
Nada Bakos, @nadabakos
Author, The Targeter: My Life in the CIA Hunting Terrorists and Challenging the White House
Former Chief Targeting Officer Tracking Zarqawi, CIA
Moderator: Peter Bergen, @peterbergencnn
Vice President, New America
The Shadow War Inside Russia and China’s Secret Operations to Defeat America, New America DC
The Shadow War
Inside Russia and China’s Secret Operations to Defeat America
Event
Poisoned dissidents. Election interference. Armed invasions. International treaties thrown into chaos. Secret military buildups. Hackers and viruses. Weapons deployed in space. China and Russia repeatedly spark news stories by carrying out bold acts of aggression and violating international laws and norms. In his new book,The Shadow War: Inside Russia’s and China’s Secret Operations to Defeat America, CNN anchor and national security correspondent Jim Sciutto provides a revealing guide to this new international conflict drawing upon on-the-ground reporting from Ukraine to the South China Sea, from a sub under the Arctic to unprecedented access to America’s Space Command.
Jim Sciutto is CNN’s chief national security correspondent and anchor of CNN Newsroom. After more than two decades as a foreign correspondent stationed in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, he returned to Washington to cover the Defense Department, the State Department, and intelligence agencies for CNN. His work has earned him Emmy Awards, the George Polk Award, the Edward R. Murrow award, and the Merriman Smith Memorial Award for excellence in presidential coverage.
Join New America’s International Security Program as they welcome Jim Sciutto in discussion on his new book with New America’s Peter Bergen.
Jim Sciutto, @jimsciutto
Author, The Shadow War: Inside Russia’s and China’s Secret Operaitons to Defeat America
Chief National Security Correspondent, CNN
Established in 2018, the Global Security Forum is an annual international gathering bringing together a multi-disciplinary network of experts, practitioners, and policy-makers from government, security, academia, media, entertainment, international organizations, the humanitarian sector, the private sector and beyond to come together to discuss the world’s most pressing topics. This invite-only event provides a unique platform for international stakeholders to convene and offer solutions that address the international community’s leading security challenges.
The 2019 Global Security Forum will take place from 15-16 October in Doha, Qatar. This year, the two-day conference will explore the security challenges posed by the proliferation of modern disinformation and the serious implications this has on an increasingly interconnected world.
The nexus between disinformation and technological advances has produced an unprecedented threat landscape, which requires a whole-of-society approach. The global effects of disinformation – whether via organized campaigns that influence elections or policy decisions, or via misinformation given to individuals or groups engaging in violent acts of perceived retribution – have become common and persistent security threats. All nations are dealing with this phenomenon. Private and non-profit organizations are dealing with the effects as well. Relying solely on government or the private sector alone to counter disinformation, however, will not work; it is imperative to convene an open dialogue in a multi-stakeholder environment to develop comprehensive solutions. The 2019 Forum will convene officials and experts from across the world, to include governments, technology platforms, media, advertising & marketing agencies, social media, academia, think tanks, and international organizations, among others.
KEY SPEAKERS
His Excellency Sheikh Mohammed bin
Abdulrahman Al-Thani Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs
State of Qatar
His Excellency Dr. Khalid bin Mohamed Al Attiyah Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of State for Defence Affairs
State of Qatar
His Excellency K. Shanmugam Minister for Home Affairs and Minister for Law
Government of Singapore
PARTICIPANTS
Kevin Baron
Executive Editor
Defense One
Peter Bergen
CNN National Security Analyst and Vice President Global Studies & Fellows
New America
Jason M. Blazakis
Professor of Practice Director
Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism
Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey
Mia Bloom
Professor of Communication and Middle East Studies
Georgia State University
Peter Canellos
Editor-at-large
Politico
Colin P. Clarke
Senior Research Fellow
The Soufan Center
Jeffrey Cole
Director and Research Professor
Center for the Digital Future at the USC Annenberg School for Communication
COL Christopher P. Costa, USA, (Ret)
Executive Director
International Spy Museum
STEVE CLEMONS
Editor-at-Large
The Hill
Dr. Hassan Rashid Al-Derham
President
Qatar University
Joseph Donnelly Sr
Chairman of The Board
The Soufan Center
Kimberly Dozier
Global Affairs Analyst
CNN
Jen Easterly
Managing Director,
Morgan Stanley
Former Special Assistant to the President
and Senior Director for Counterterrorism
Yevhen Fedchenko
Co-founder and Chief Editor of StopFake.org
Director of Mohyla School of Journalism
National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy
Joshua Geltzer
Former Senior Director
Counterterrorism and Deputy Legal
Advisor, National Security Council
Georgetown University Law Center
BOBBY GHOSH
Journalist
Bloomberg
Christopher Graves
President & Founder
Ogilvy Center for Behavioral Science
Karen J. Greenberg
Director
The Center on National
Security Fordham Law
Dr. Ahmad Hasnah
President
Hamad bin Khalifa University
Mounir Ibrahim
Vice President of Strategic Initiatives
Truepic
Michael Isikoff
Chief Investigative Correspondent
Yahoo! News
Préfet Yann Jounot
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Civipol and President Milipol Exhibitions
J.D. Maddox
Technology Advisor
Global Engagement Center
U.S. State Department
Michael Masters
President
The Soufan Center
Priyank Mathur
Founder and CEO
Mythos Labs
Maya Mirchandani
Senior Fellow, Observer Research Foundation
Assistant Professor, Department of Media Studies, Ashoka University
John Montgomery
Head of Brand Safety
GroupM
Olga Robinson
Senior Journalist
BBC Monitoring
Kacper Rekawek
Head of National Security Programme
GLOBSEC
Candace Rondeaux
Senior Fellow with
the Center on the Future of War
New America
Bret Schafer
Media and Digital Disinformation Fellow
Alliance for Securing Democracy
David Scharia
Chief of Branch
Counter-Terrorism Committee
Executive Directive (CTED)
David Schraven
Founder & Publisher
Correctiv
Rebecca Skippage
Assistant Editor
BBC Monitoring
Marie-Michelle Strah, PhD.
John Jay College of Criminal Justice, ICJ Program
CUNY
Meredith Stricker
Executive Director
The Soufan Center
Rita Singh
Research Faculty
The School of Computer Science
Carnegie Mellon University
Charles Spencer
Assistant Director FBI
Mr. Mikael Tofvesson
Head of Global Monitoring and Analysis Section
Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB)
Chase Untermeyer
Chairman
The Qatar-America Institute and
Former United States Ambassador to Qatar
Ali Velshi
Anchor, Co-Host
MSNBC
ORGANIZERS
OUR PARTNERS
OFFICIAL CARRIER
LOCATION
The St. Regis Doha Doha West Bay,Doha14435 +974 4446 0000
John Bolton is Donald Trump’s war whisperer, CNN.com
Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. He is the author of “United States of Jihad: Investigating America’s Homegrown Terrorists.” The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion articles at CNN.
(CNN)John Bolton, President Trump’s national security adviser, seemingly hasn’t met a war he doesn’t love.
Bolton was a prominent proponent of the Iraq War and he has never evinced any doubt about the wisdom of that decision, telling the Washington Examiner four years ago, “I still think the decision to overthrow Saddam was correct.”
By contrast, last year President Trump said the Iraq War was “the single worst decision ever made.”
The US government is now ramping up tensions with the volatile North Korean regime, announcing Thursday that it had “recently” taken into custody a North Korean ship that was defying sanctions on the nuclear-armed state — the first time the US has taken such an action.
But Trump’s general approach on North Korea has been to engage in negotiations with its leader, Kim Jong Un.
In recent weeks Bolton pushed for a coup in Venezuela involving opposition leader Juan Guaido that was believed to have the backing of key officers of the nation’s military. The US-backed uprising seems to have fizzled.
On Thursday, President Trump said that he actually moderates the bellicose Bolton: “I’m the one who tempers him, which is OK. I have John Bolton and I have people who are a little more dovish than him.”
Bolton’s enthusiasm for the muscular use of the military seems out of place in the administration of a President who has repeatedly questioned and sought to end America’s wars in the Middle East.
Yet while Trump and Bolton may be out of step with each other on policy toward Venezuela and North Korea, one country they both seem to be on the same page about is Iran.
Bolton, 70, has espoused deeply conservative views since he was a teenager. The son of a Baltimore firefighter, Bolton worked on the Barry Goldwater Republican presidential campaign in 1964, and he later interned for President Richard Nixon’s vice president, Spiro Agnew. Bolton went to Yale and then to Yale Law School. He has worked in Republican administrations since Ronald Reagan’s first term.
Bolton has long rejected any constraints on American power. The happiest moment Bolton had when he was working for the US State Department was when he “unsigned” the agreement that made the United States a party to the International Criminal Court, which he saw as a risk for US political and military leaders who might be charged with war crimes. After Bolton pulled the United States out of the agreement in 2002, he said he felt like a kid on Christmas Day.
When Bolton became Trump’s national security adviser, he ensured that anyone on the International Criminal Court who was investigating American soldiers or intelligence officials for possible war crimes in Afghanistan was denied visas to the United States.
Bolton’s dislike of the Iranian regime is longstanding. In 2015, Bolton wrote in the New York Times that the United States should bomb Iran because “Iran will not negotiate away its nuclear program,” which is exactly what Iran did that same year when it negotiated an agreement with the Obama administration to halt its nuclear weapons program.
The New York Times reported Monday that Bolton has ordered up military options that were presented to top Trump national security officials last week. They include the potential deployment of as many as 120,000 American troops to the Middle East if Iran attacks American targets in the region or resumes work on its nuclear weapons program.
Conflict with Iran?
The United States is now getting closer to war with Iran than at any time in decades, a process that began with the unraveling of the Iran nuclear deal last year.
Former US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Trump’s previous national security adviser H.R. McMaster, and former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis all advocated for preserving the Iran nuclear deal on the basis that a regionally aggressive Iran without nuclear weapons was a better prospect than a regionally aggressive Iran armed with nukes.
The deal meant that Iran was not able to begin to enrich uranium until 2030.
The International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly certified that Iran has stuck to the terms of the nuclear deal.
On October 3, 2017, Mattis, long known for his hawkish views on Iran, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that Iran was sticking to the nuclear agreement. When Sen. Angus King of Maine asked Mattis whether he thought the deal was in US national security interests, he replied, “Yes, senator, I do.”
Less than a month after Bolton became national security adviser, the US pulled out of the Iran deal. Trump announced on May 8, 2018, that he was pulling out of the Iran nuclear agreement. As Bolton stood off to one side behind him, Trump gave a press conference at the White House announcing the pullout, saying, “The fact is that this was a horrible one-sided deal that should never, ever been made.”
The US pullout from the Iran deal was followed by the US putting new sanctions on Iran. The other parties to the agreement — Britain, France and Germany, as well as China and Russia — have remained in the deal.
Last week, Iran responded to the new US sanctions by saying that it would start pulling out of parts of the nuclear deal.
Around the same time, US officials briefed reporters about intelligence suggesting Iran or its proxies were planning to attack American forces in Iraq and Syria.
A US Central Command spokesman then rebutted the British general on Tuesday, saying his comments “run counter to the identified credible threats available to intelligence from US and allies regarding Iranian-backed forces in the region.”
On Sunday, two Saudi oil tankers and two other ships were attacked in the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf. The Wall Street Journal reported that US intelligence has made an initial assessment that Iran was behind the attacks.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry says the attacks were “alarming and regrettable,” implying that Iran wasn’t responsible for them.
On Tuesday, armed drones attacked oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, according to the Saudi government. Iran-backed Houthi forces in neighboring Yemen have repeatedly launched missiles and drones at Saudi targets.
As a result of the increasing tensions with Iran, Bolton announced on Sunday that the United States was deploying a carrier strike group and a bomber task force to the Middle East.
Winston Churchill, who fought in a number of wars and led his nation to victory in the most lethal conflict in history, observed that talking was always better than fighting: “To jaw-jaw is better than to war-war.”
Bolton, who avoided serving in Vietnam by going to law school and joining the National Guard, seems to have reversed Churchill’s maxim: “Better to war-war than to jaw-jaw.”
“Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century.” Book discussion w George Packer, New America DC
May 9, 2019
New America holds a book discussion on “Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century.”
SECTION: BOOK DISCUSSION; ||US/DIPLOMACY/BOOK|| Foreign Affairs
LENGTH: 40 words
TIME: 11 a.m.
PARTICIPANTS: author George Packer; and Peter Bergen, vice president of global studies at New America
LOCATION: New America, 740 15th Street NW, Suite 900, Washington, D.C.
Please join CSIS for a discussion of the U.S. Army’s recently published and long-awaited two volume history, The U.S. Army in the Iraq War, 2003-2011. The authors will outline key findings from major episodes in the war and discuss the implications for today. Peter Bergen of New America, Kim Dozier of CNN and the Daily Beast, Michael Gordon of the Wall Street Journal, and Ken Pollak of AEI will provide commentary and analysis.
Agenda
9:00 – 9:20: Introduction
Frank Sobchak and Joel Rayburn, OIF Editors
with Michael Gordon, the Wall Street Journal
9:20 – 10:10: Volume I: Invasion, Insurgency, Civil War, 2003-2006
Moderator: Peter Bergen, Vice President, Global Studies & Fellows at New America
Author: Jeanne Godfroy, OIF Study Author
Commentator: Kim Dozier, Contributor at CNN and The Daily Beast
10:10 – 10:20: Coffee break
10:20 – 11:15: Volume II: Surge and Withdrawal, 2007-2011
Moderator: Seth Center, Director of the Project on History and Strategy at CSIS
Author: Jim Powell, OIF Study Author
Commentator: Ken Pollack, Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute
This event is made possible by the general support to CSIS.
Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. He is the author of “United States of Jihad: Investigating America’s Homegrown Terrorists.” The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion articles at CNN.
(CNN)The murder of Lori Kaye, a 60-year-old woman attending synagogue on Saturday, was the work of a domestic terrorist who killed her because she was Jewish. The shooter also wounded three others at the synagogue, who were celebrating the last day of Passover.
Terrorism is generally defined as an act of violence against civilians for political purposes by an individual or group. Saturday’s assault at the San Diego-area synagogue by suspect John Earnest certainly fits that definition.
If this attack seems sickeningly familiar to many Americans, that’s because it is.
Like school shooters, terrorists learn from and emulate other terrorists. According to what is believed to be the shooter’s online manifesto, similar hate-filled terrorist attacks inspired his heinous act — including the October shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, in which a man, armed with an assault rifle, killed 11 worshippers. The shooter in that attack blamed Jews for the migrant caravan that was then moving through Mexico, according to his postings on social media.
In this manifesto, the shooter also references the man who killed 50 worshipers at a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, last month
According to local authorities, the California shooter was a “lone actor” terrorist who operated without the support of any group. He was also allegedly armed with an “AR-type assault weapon,” which is designed to kill human beings at a rapid pace and is often the weapon of choice for mass murderers in the United States.
Jihadist terrorists, using semi-automatic rifles, have also carried out massacres in the United States in recent years. In 2016, armed with an assault rifle, Omar Mateen killed 49 people at a nightclub in Orlando. He was inspired by ISIS — but had no direction or training from the terrorist organization.
A year earlier, armed with assault rifles, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, killed 14 at an office in San Bernardino, California. They, too, were inspired by ISIS, but had no direct connections to the group.
What to do?
There are three kinds of issues that need to be addressed to respond to these cases of domestic terrorism.
The easy availability of assault rifles in the United States helps enable those intent on mass murder, yet the Second Amendment absolutism of the National Rifle Association (NRA) has prevented common sense measures to curtail the sale of such weapons, which are designed to kill as many human beings as possible.
Such measures do not amount to “taking” peoples’ guns away. My in-laws in Louisiana do not go deer hunting with assault rifles.
However, the mood in the United States seems to be shifting — with the increasing frequency of mass murders enabled by semiautomatic weapons, contributions to the NRA are “lagging,” according to the New York Times. And, according to Gallup polling released in October, six in ten Americans now support stricter gun laws.
Last month, the New Zealand government banned the sale of assault rifles shortly after the massacre at the mosque. Could the US Congress ever enact such a sensible measure? The question, of course, is unfortunately almost entirely rhetorical, as long as politicians remain obedient to the NRA.
Another issue to address is the legal status of domestic terrorism, which is not a federal crime, according to Mary McCord, who ran the National Security Division at the Department of Justice until 2017, where she oversaw all terrorism investigations in the United States. The time has come to consider how such a statute might work.
Of course, there are First Amendment issues that make this complicated, but the case of Coast Guard Lt. Christopher Paul Hasson of Silver Spring, Maryland, underlines why such a statute could be useful. Hasson was arrested in February. Prosecutors said he had a hit list of Democratic politicians and anchors at CNN and MSNBC — and that he had assembled 15 firearms and more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition.
Yet a federal judge said Thursday that Hasson will be released, while he is awaiting trial on weapons and drugs charges to which he has pleaded not guilty.
If Hasson had been an ISIS sympathizer, it likely would have been much easier to keep him in detention because any form of “material support” to ISIS, a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization is a federal crime that allows prosecutors to keep suspects in jail while they await trial.
In addition, President Donald Trump needs to be clear about calling out extremism of all kinds. To his credit, at a rally on Saturday in Wisconsin, Trump said, “We forcefully condemn the evil of anti-Semitism and hate. It must be defeated.”
Trump, however, should stop defending his remarks about the “fine people” on both sides of the violent white nationalist rally in Charlottesville in 2017, as he did on Friday. At the Charlottesville rally, hoards of neo-Nazis marched and chanted “Jews will not replace us.” This is the same anti-Semitism that inspired the California shooter to carry out his attack at the synagogue on Saturday, as outlined in the manifesto.
Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America, a professor of practice at Arizona State University and a board member of the James Foley Foundation, which advocates for American hostages. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion articles at CNN.
(CNN)On Friday the President tweeted, “‘Donald J. Trump is the greatest hostage negotiator that I know of in the history of the United States. 20 hostages, many in impossible circumstances, have been released in last two years. No money was paid.’ Cheif (sic) Hostage Negotiator, USA!”
Many of President Trump’s tweets are hyperbolic. Some are simply false, such as his frequent claims about the purportedly “illegal” investigation of special counsel Robert Mueller.
It’s unclear whom Trump was quoting in his tweet Friday, but when it comes to the administration’s record of freeing American hostages, the President certainly can celebrate some success.
One such example was the release of Caitlan Coleman and her Canadian husband, Josh Boyle, nearly five years after they were taken hostage by a Taliban-affiliated group. Coleman and Boyle were kidnapped while they were backpacking in Afghanistan in 2012 and later spirited to Pakistan. In the time she was held captive, Coleman gave birth to three children, all of whom were freed in a 2017 rescue mission orchestrated by the US and Pakistani governments.
The Trump administration put considerable pressure on Pakistan for assistance, and national security officials were motivated to take action due to the three children, according to Trump officials I have spoken to.
As a result of the pressure from American officials, the Pakistanis launched a rescue operation on October 11, 2017, freeing all five hostages unharmed.
In North Korea, American citizens Kim Dong Chul, Kim Hak-song and Kim Sang Duk were released last May after being held on arbitrary charges for more than a year. Their release was a result of the negotiations between the Trump administration and the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong Un, ahead of their first summit in Singapore.
The Trump administration, which has prioritized the return of American hostages, has benefited from a policy overhaul initiated by President Obama after the 44th President admitted to several failures.
The Obama administration was criticized for its feckless response when ISIS was holding four American hostages in Syria. The hostages included the freelance journalist James Foley, whose brutal beheading in 2014 was videotaped and circulated online.
According to Foley’s mother, US government officials threatened the family with possible prosecution if they tried to raise money for a ransom for their son’s release because it was against the law to give money to a terrorist group.
Hostages from European countries such as Austria, France or Germany that are known to pay ransoms are more likely to be freed, according to a 2017 report from the think tank New America.
American hostages are “more than twice as likely to remain in captivity, die in captivity, or be murdered by their captors as the average Western hostage,” according to the report, which compiled data on 1,185 hostage cases from 2001 to 2016.
After ISIS killed Foley, his family lobbied for a better outcome for other families. (I sit on the board of the foundation the Foleys created in the name of their son.)
In part because of the Foleys’ efforts, the Obama administration founded the Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell in 2015 to better coordinate efforts across various government agencies such as the FBI and State Department that work to free hostages.
Hostage families now have greater leeway to negotiate directly with terrorist groups even as the US government itself maintains a no-ransom policy.
A presidential envoy on hostages was also appointed at the State Department so that the issue now has a primary advocate there.
Those institutions continue to work under the Trump administration and as a result over the past two years, 20 hostages and unjustly held detainees have been released.
While Trump doesn’t seem to have been personally involved in these negotiations, he is ultimately responsible for the successes and failures on his watch. Certainly when it comes to freeing American hostages, the Trump administration has a good story to tell.
Those successes are tempered, however, by the fact that a number of long-standing hostage cases still need to be resolved. Freelance journalist Austin Tice, for one, disappeared in Syria in 2012 and is believed to be held by the Syrian regime.
Foreign Fighters in the Armies of Jihad, Brookings DC
The record number of foreigners who fought in the Syrian civil war and their involvement in terrorist attacks in the West have highlighted the importance of foreign fighters and the need to develop better policies to stop them. In his latest book, “Road Warriors: Foreign Fighters in the Armies of Jihad,” Brookings Senior Fellow Daniel Byman weaves the story of the modern jihadi foreign fighter movement, bringing together past conflicts such as Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Chechnya and current ones such as Iraq, Syria, and Somalia. Byman discusses how and why foreign fighters pose a threat but also how they often foster infighting, alienate local populations, and otherwise hurt the very causes they try to advance. Byman further argues that, left alone, the foreign fighters are dangerous, but that states can effectively stymie their rise and reduce the allure of conflict.
On May 10, Brookings will host the launch event for “Road Warriors,” featuring a discussion with the author moderated by Peter Bergen, acclaimed journalist and vice president for global studies and fellows at New America. Following the discussion, the participants will take questions from the audience.
Even in defeat, ISIS’ ideology inspires mass murder, CNN.com
Even in defeat, ISIS’ ideology inspires mass murder
BYLINE: By Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst
LENGTH: 665 words
DATELINE: (CNN)
Editor’s note: Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. He is the author of “United States of Jihad: Investigating America’s Homegrown Terrorists.” The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion articles at CNN.
(CNN) — Five years ago, ISIS reigned over 34,000 square miles in Iraq and Syria and collected billions of dollars in taxes and oil revenues as well as from looting banks.
Today, its so-called caliphate is virtually gone. And yet on Sunday, the continued influence of ISIS’ ideology became gruesomely apparent: A terrorist attack, one of the most lethal since 9/11, killed at least 359 people at churches and luxury hotels in Sri Lanka.
On Tuesday Sri Lankan authorities accused a local Islamist group, National Tawheed Jamath, of carrying out the attacks.
Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said, “This could not have been done just locally,” and that some of the terrorists involved had traveled abroad and had foreign links.
A US official told CNN’s Barbara Starr that ISIS inspired the group behind the attacks in Sri Lanka.
CNN has also learned that an ISIS suspect told Indian officials that he had trained a Sri Lankan militant who is associated with NTJ, the local Islamist group that Sri Lankan officials have blamed for the attacks.
The attacks are a terrible reminder that ISIS’ ideology, which treats adherents of other religions and Muslims who don’t share their Sunni extremist agenda as “infidels,” was not extinguished with the loss of its caliphate.
That ideology sanctions attacks on Christians in their places of worship. ISIS murdered 20 worshippers at a church in the Philippines in January.
Last May, ISIS carried out attacks at three churches in Indonesia, killing 12 people and injuring many more.
ISIS also killed 49 people gathered for Mass at two churches in Egypt in 2017.
On Sunday we saw the ISIS lethal ideology play out again in the attacks on three churches in Sri Lanka.
On Tuesday ISIS’ Amaq news channel claimed responsibility for the Sri Lanka attacks but didn’t provide any proof of its direct involvement.
Whether ISIS itself was involved in the attacks or was simply the inspiration for the attacks matters little to the victims of the bombings in Sri Lanka and to their families.
The Awlaki parallel
Clearly, killing ISIS’ geographical caliphate did not kill ISIS’ ideas, which continue to inspire militants around the world.
The United States has seen a similar phenomenon with the ideology of the late Anwar al Awlaki, a US-born cleric who became a leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen.
Awlaki was killed in a US drone strike in Yemen in 2011, but even in death Awalki’s ideas about the necessity of violence purportedly in the name of God continue to resonate.
The research institution New America found that since his death, Awlaki’s videos had influenced more than 80 terrorists in the United States.
What to do
There are, of course, no easy answers for violence that is often enabled by hateful propaganda on the internet. One approach is to keep up pressure on social media companies to reduce as much as feasible any propaganda from violent extremists such as Awlaki or from ISIS.
This is not a simple task when you consider that YouTube has 400 hours of material uploaded to it every minute.
Certainly social media companies have become more proactive in taking down material that incites violence.
Facebook has said it had planned to hire 20,000 content moderators by the end of 2018.
More could be done, however, for instance, by applying machine learning and artificial intelligence to take down quickly any content that is designed to stir up violence.
It is also incumbent on national leaders around the world to realize that a key part of their jobs should be to reduce sectarian tensions, not to stoke them.
FEATURED BOOK
The Cost of Chaos: The Trump Administration and The World:
