Training
Training for potential homegrown terrorists is often very fast paced, even rushed, as some groups under attack by U.S. forces may feel the need to implement operations “more precipitously than they might otherwise occur,” according to Bruce Hoffman. This was the case with the Times Square plot carried out by Faisal Shazad. Tehrik-i-Taliban or Pakistani Taliban (TPP) was on record as providing financing and four months of training for Shazad directly prior to his actions in Times Square. Shazad reportedly only received three to five days of training in bomb-making.
Some individuals go somewhere considered to be within the region containing extremism, predominantly Pakistan, but also Iraq, Afghanistan, Kashmir, or Somalia. In the case of the London Underground bombers, Mohammad Sidique Khan, the operational leader of the cell, received military and explosives training at a camp in Malakand, Pakistan in July 2003 and later took Shezad Tanweer to Karachi, Pakistan, in late 2004 to February 2005 where they received training at al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.
Training and usage of recruits is varied. Some like Shazad received little training and ultimately failed in their intent. Others, like sleeper agent David Headley’s reconnaissance efforts were essential towards Lashkar-e-Toiba’s (LeT) success in November 2008 Mumbai attacks. The lone wolves may achieve their objectives, like Abdulhakim Muhammad (née Carlos Bledsoe), who killed a U.S. military recruiter in Little Rock, Arkansas, and Nidal Malik Hasan, but the vast majority of individual operators fail in executing their plans because of lack of training and planning.
Somalian Al-Shabab (“the youth”) recruits heavily in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. The 30+ Somali-Americans receive training by senior al-Qaeda leaders in Somalia. Hoffman believes this indicates that radicalization and recruitment is not an isolated, lone wolf phenomenon unique to Somali-Americans, but that there is terrorist recruitment infrastructure in the United States.
Read more about this topic: Homegrown Terrorism
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