Recent Trends
Homegrown or imported terrorism is not new to the United States or Europe. The United States has uncovered a number of alleged terrorist plots that have been successfully suppressed through domestic intelligence and law enforcement. The United States has begun to account for the threat of homegrown terrorism, as shown by increased volume of literature on the subject in recent years and increased number of terrorist sites since Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, began posting beheading videos in 2003. A July 2009 document by the FBI estimated that there were roughly 15,000 websites and web forums that support terrorist activities, with around 10,000 of them actively maintained. 80% of these sites are on U.S.-based servers.
According to the Congressional Research Service’s study, “American Jihadist Terrorism: Combatting a Complex Threat,” between May 2009 and November 2010, law enforcement made arrests related to 22 homegrown jihadist-inspired terror plots by American citizens or legal residents of the U.S. This is a significant increase over the 21 plots caught in the seven interim years after the September 11, 2001 attacks. During these seven years, two plots resulted in attacks, compared to the two attacks between May 2009 and November 2010, which resulted in 14 deaths. This spike post-May 2009 shows that some Americans are susceptible to ideologies that support a violent form of jihad. Roughly one-quarter of these plots are linked to major international terrorist groups but there is an increasing number of Americans holding high-level operational roles in these terrorist groups, especially al-Qaeda and its affiliated groups. Perhaps for these reasons, former CIA Director Michael Hayden called homegrown terrorism the more serious threat faced by American citizens today.
England, likewise, considers homegrown terrorism to be a considerable threat. On June 6, 2011, Prime Minister David Cameron announced a wide-ranging strategy to prevent British citizens from being radicalized into becoming terrorists while at university. The strategy looks to prevent extremist speakers or groups from coming to universities.
Read more about this topic: Homegrown Terrorism
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