[Senate Hearing 114-776]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 114-776
THE SPREAD OF ISIS AND
TRANSNATIONAL TERRORISM
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
APRIL 12, 2016
__________
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
BOB CORKER, Tennessee, Chairman
JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland
MARCO RUBIO, Florida BARBARA BOXER, California
RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey
JEFF FLAKE, Arizona JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire
CORY GARDNER, Colorado CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware
DAVID PERDUE, Georgia TOM UDALL, New Mexico
JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia CHRISTOPHER MURPHY, Connecticut
RAND PAUL, Kentucky TIM KAINE, Virginia
JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts
Todd Womack, Staff Director
Jessica Lewis, Democratic Staff Director
John Dutton, Chief Clerk
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Corker, Hon. Bob, U.S. Senator From Tennessee.................... 1
Cardin, Hon. Benjamin L., U.S. Senator From Maryland............. 2
Wood, Graeme, Edward R. Murrow Press Fellow, Council on Foreign
Relations, Washington, DC...................................... 5
Prepared statement........................................... 6
Levitt, Dr. Matthew, director, Stein Program on Counterterrorism
and Intelligence, The Washington Institute for Near East
Policy, Washington, DC......................................... 8
Prepared statement........................................... 10
Olsen, Hon. Matthew G., former director, National
Counterterrorism Center, Washington, DC........................ 17
Prepared statement........................................... 19
(iii)
THE SPREAD OF ISIS AND
TRANSNATIONAL TERRORISM
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TUESDAY, APRIL 12, 2016
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Foreign Relations,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:00 a.m. in
Room SD-419, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Bob Corker,
chairman of the committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Corker [presiding], Rubio, Johnson,
Flake, Gardner, Barrasso, Cardin, Menendez, Shaheen, Udall,
Murphy, Kaine, and Markey.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. BOB CORKER,
U.S. SENATOR FROM TENNESSEE
The Chairman. The Foreign Relations Committee will come to
order.
We have some important business to do, but I think our most
important business is to wish Bertie a happy 85th birthday
today. So thank you so much for what you do here. [Applause.]
The Chairman. You know, the State Department is an
institution, no doubt, but Bertie is more of an institution. So
we thank you very much for what you do here.
I also want to thank our witnesses for being here to
testify. We have got a good mix of experts and practitioners.
Today we look forward to hearing your thoughts on the
spread of ISIS and transnational terrorism. Tragically, last
year saw attacks that were supported or inspired by ISIS in
Paris, Turkey, Beirut, Egypt, San Bernardino, and Brussels and
even in my hometown of Chattanooga.
Simultaneously dozens of groups around the world have
claimed some affiliation with ISIS. I hope our witnesses can
comment on how many of these organizations have real ties to
ISIS headquarters in Raqqa and how many are simply attracted to
the brand.
I also think this hearing will be a good opportunity to
explore the goals of ISIS as an organization. Are they more
focused on establishing a physical caliphate, or are their
goals shifting to coordinating attacks abroad, a shift that few
people predicted in the beginning? Do they have long-term goals
and concrete ideology, or are they more opportunistic?
I know we will all have questions specific to recent
attacks in Europe, and I hope our witnesses can shed some light
on the unique threat facing Europe and what steps we can take
to encourage intelligence sharing and better border controls.
It seems that our partners often depend upon American
intelligence but argue against its collection because of
privacy concerns. Obviously, there is a rub there.
I would also appreciate your views on the use of end-to-end
encryption in some of these attacks and how much of a threat
that technology poses.
Finally, it appears that ISIS has created a new model of
terrorism, one less structured and more violent than Al Qaeda.
I hope our witnesses can comment on what this new model means
for the future. Can we expect other groups to imitate the ISIS
model, and will ISIS continue to spread? And more importantly,
what steps can we take to ensure that this model is
unsuccessful?
With that, again I want to thank you. We have some
outstanding witnesses today, and we appreciate you being here.
With that, I will turn to our distinguished ranking member
and my friend, Ben Cardin.
STATEMENT OF HON. BENJAMIN L. CARDIN,
U.S. SENATOR FROM MARYLAND
Senator Cardin. Well, Chairman Corker, thank you for
calling this hearing, first and foremost, to wish Bertie a
happy birthday. I think it was well timed for that purpose. You
know, members of this committee come and go, but Bertie stays.
And we want to know his secret because each of us have aged a
great deal on this committee, more than the number of years we
have been on the committee, where he seems to get younger. So,
Bertie, thank you very much for your service to the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee.
And, Mr. Chairman, I thank you for convening this hearing.
This is an opportunity for this committee to really step back
and look at trends in terrorism broadly. It is my hope today
that our witnesses can help us understand what lessons we have
learned from our country's long history in countering terrorism
and how we can apply these lessons to meet the new challenges
posed by ISIL.
While ISIL is the single greatest terrorist threat to our
homeland security and the security of our allies worldwide, let
us remember that terrorism as a global phenomenon is not new.
It is a tactic tied to no specific religion, nation, or
ethnicity. The goals of its perpetrators are varied. Decades
ago, European Marxist groups in Germany and the Red Brigade in
Italy engaged in terrorist activities against police, judges,
and jurors. In Sri Lanka, the Tamil Tigers turned to suicide
bombing in their insurgency against the government. I vividly
remember how, in order to despicably draw attention to their
cause, the Palestinian terrorist group, Black September,
murdered 11 Israeli Olympic team members in 1972. In the 21st
century, Al Qaeda and the attacks of 9/11 ushered in a new era
of transnational jihad terrorism aimed at drawing the United
States into a generational conflict. Just like ISIL today, Al
Qaeda directed, financed, and inspired attacks in Madrid in
2004, London in 2005, and among many other bombings.
But Al Qaeda, though it is scattered across the Middle
East, has not broken us. We have adjusted, adapted, and are
winning that fight. As we turn to meet the challenges of new
threats such as ISIL, I believe there are vulnerable lessons
that can be learned.
For example, I believe that by leaving in place the 2001
AUMF, Congress could be authorizing a state of perpetual war. I
know, Mr. Chairman, we have tried to deal with how we deal with
an AUMF to meet the current needs, but the 2001 left without
challenge--I have introduced legislation. I put a sunset on
it--to me removes the Congress from being engaged when we
should be authorizing specific force.
Moreover, I am concerned that drone strikes, regardless of
whether the next President is a Democrat or Republican--I want
to see transparent, strong oversight of the drone program by
Congress. I applaud this administration's recent announcement
that it intends to release information about casualties from
drone strikes outside of war zones. But still more work needs
to be done.
Another lesson we have learned from our experience against
Al Qaeda is to remain resolute and clear-eyed. In recent months
and weeks, tragic attacks in Brussels and Pakistan have once
again thrust the issue of terrorism to the headlines. And our
election year politics have only magnified the problem. But if
we are once again going to defeat our enemies, in this case
ISIL, we must remain as vigilant, resist complacency, but not
overreact to terrorism. Factually speaking, when the number of
terrorist incidents worldwide has jumped alarmingly in recent
years overall, most terrorist attacks occur primarily in just
five countries: Iraq, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and
Syria. Fear is a powerful weapon and we cannot let the tragic
December 2015 attacks in San Bernardino scare us into walling
ourselves off from the rest of the world or from each other.
Today we will hear from some of our witnesses about how
ISIL is a new manifestation of the global terrorist threat. In
my mind, there is no question that ISIL is a barbaric terrorist
organization. It is an extremist threat to the United States,
our interests, and our allies in the region. Its ambitions to
create a state may be new. Its online tactics to recruit and
indoctrinate may be aggressive, and its organization may be
disciplined. But our resolve is unwavering, and our strategy to
contain, diminish, and eliminate ISIL around the globe is
working. Yet, much more needs to be done.
I strongly support President Obama's goal of degrading and
destroying ISIL, a strategy that seems to be succeeding in Iraq
and Syria, though there is still a long way to go. Our recent
successes include ISIL's loss of 40 percent of its populated
territory it used to control in Iraq, the elimination of high-
value ISIL operatives by coalition airstrikes, including ISIL's
finance minister and minister of war, and the training of
nearly 20,000 Iraqi security forces, many of which have already
participated in the fight such as the successful liberation of
Ramadi. These military gains are critical, but I also urge our
officials to prioritize our diplomatic power as much as our
military might. For only if we work to foster politically
inclusive governments in the Middle East, that the threat of
all citizens with dignity and respect under the law, we will be
able to counteract the societal conditions that assist
radicalization and extremism.
Mr. Chairman, you and I met with the foreign minister from
Saudi Arabia. I was in Saudi Arabia 2 weeks ago and asked the
direct question. Could you support a leader in Syria that was
not Sunni? The answer was yes. We want it to be nonsectarian.
They want an all-inclusive government because they have
recognized an all-inclusive government in Syria brings
stability to Syria, which helps the stability concerns in the
entire region.
So what we are looking for is diplomatically to be able to
have governments in that region that represent all the
communities and have the confidence of all the communities. And
if we do not achieve that, there is a gap that feeds into the
recruitment by extremist groups.
And while ISIL has expanded across the Middle East and
beyond, its core remains in Syria and Iraq, and only by
resolving the political conflicts there can we hope to remove
ISIL from the picture permanently.
This is not less true than other places. ISIL's barbarity
has found fertile ground. Because of what ISIL does, how it
breeds and expands, it is exploiting political vacuums. It
fills them with its hatred, its lies, and misdirection. Its
warped view of Islam and its promises of meting vengeance,
profit, power and deliverance to the naive and the criminal.
This is true in Syria and Iraq and Libya and Yemen, and its
recruitment of foreign supporters often see themselves in a
political vacuum of exclusion, discrimination, and alienation
within their own societies.
We got to do better. In Syria, we must continue to work
with the international community and Syrians towards a
negotiated settlement that is sustainable, inclusive, and
reflective of the legitimate desires of all Syrians. In Iraq,
we must encourage all leaders across ethnic and sectarian
divides to commit to governing in an inclusive, representative,
and non-corrupt manner. This is the only way to ensure long-
term stability and begin the critical work of reconstructing
and rebuilding Iraq.
Mr. Chairman, let me tell you. I applaud your willingness
to step back and have this committee look at the big picture. I
look forward to our witnesses' testimony. I have full
confidence that no matter what ISIL throws at us at home or
abroad, our democracy, our values, and our humanity will
prevail.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Cardin.
We will now turn to our witnesses. Our first witness is Mr.
Graeme Wood, an Edward R. Murrow Press Fellow at the Council on
Foreign Relations. Thank you. Our second witness is Dr. Matthew
Levitt, Director of the Stein Program on Counterterrorism and
Intelligence at The Washington Institute. And our third witness
today is the Honorable Matthew Olsen, former Director of the
National Counterterrorism Center.
I think all of you understand we will enter your written
testimony into the record without objection. If you would
summarize in about 5 minutes, we look forward to questions.
With that, let's start in the order that I introduced you.
Thanks again for being here.
STATEMENT OF GRAEME WOOD, EDWARD R. MURROW PRESS FELLOW,
COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. Wood. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Islamic State has inspired immense fear among Americans
and our allies. My main purpose is to discuss the nature of the
threat that it poses and to differentiate the reasonable from
the unreasonable fear.
As a journalist, what I do is I speak to people. I read the
propaganda of ISIS whenever I can, and I try to find people
who, in some way or another, reflect the views of the group
and, if possible, find people who have direct connections to
it, but who have been kind of left behind, who are still in
places where I can speak to them freely and speak to them
directly.
They have many things in common. Many beliefs that I think
are familiar to the committee about the righteousness of the
caliphate led by Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, that he is the rightful
political successor to the Prophet Muhammad, et cetera.
So I will begin by talking about what I consider the
reasonable fears about what ISIS/ISIL represents.
Supporters of ISIL have given me little reason to believe
that their most brutal and intolerant statements are mere
bravado or exaggeration for effect. It is true that they have
welcomed my questions and treated me very gently in person in a
very friendly way in many cases. And they actually seem to
appreciate the comforts of the Western countries and tolerant
societies in which they live.
Their convictions about ISIL and its righteousness,
however, are real. When they talk about genocide against Shia
or about reinstituting slavery and other practices that are
inconsistent with modern notions of human rights, they do so
without apology and at times with real pleasure and gusto.
Their opinions are thoroughly premeditated, and they are based
in an interpretation of scripture and Islamic history, as well
as practical considerations about how to implement that
interpretation. I think it is folly, first of all, to discount
their sincerity or to interpret their beliefs as ill-
considered, as foolish, or to understand their fanaticism is
anything but sincere and real and irreducible to other factors.
Second, the support that I have seen in speaking to them
has been broad, as well as deep. The demographics of the
supports skew toward the young and male, but there is a great
diversity in national origin, age, education, class, and they
are certainly not summarizable as the kind of underworld of
Western European gangsters that we have seen in some of the
composites that have been portrayed in the press. Those types
are definitely well represented, but I have also come across
doctors, engineers, autodidacts that in talking to them, you
immediately recognize educated people who have gone to their
chosen terrorist group with careful consideration. There are
also men who are well past peak battlefield age and women of
all ages in non-military roles.
Finally, the numbers are very large, tens of thousands of
people versus probably hundreds in the core Al Qaeda group that
we came to know in the mid-2000s.
So to speak a bit to what I think are some of the
unreasonable fears or misunderstandings about the group.
First, although they speak with great grandeur in their
ideological claims, they talk about genocide and so forth, and
I think comparisons to Nazi ideology or other types of
ideological threats that the United States and the world has
faced in the past are apt. They are not apt in terms of the
capacities of the group. ISIS still remains something that is a
somewhat localizable phenomenon.
On the question of whether they are prioritizing the
building of a caliphate or attacks on Western targets, I
continue to believe that they care deeply about the
preservation of their core territories and that their attacks
on Western targets, especially spectacular attacks of the
September 11th style, is a secondary concern for them. Their
early message that supporters from the West should go to ISIS
territory continues to be echoed in their propaganda today.
They have, instead, essentially taken the old Al Qaeda model of
conspiracy and have attached that to the mass movement of ISIS;
that is, ISIS has tried to mobilize tens of thousands of people
to migrate, but they also have a conspiratorial element that is
Al Qaeda style and that is attempting to have attacks on the
West.
We should understand that the core differentiating aspect
of ISIS is the mass movement, is the fact that it has been able
to mobilize a huge movement of people and tens of thousands of
people. That is not something that they have, thus far, been
able to, with great effect, direct toward the West in the form
of terrorist attacks. Those attacks will happen, but they will
not take advantage of that core strength.
Thank you.
[Mr. Wood's prepared statement follows:]
Prepared Statement of Graeme Wood, Edward R. Murrow Press
Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations, Washington, DC \1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The Council on Foreign Relations takes no institutional
positions on policy issues and has no affiliation with the U.S.
government. All statements of fact and expressions of opinion contained
herin are the sole responsibility of the author.
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The Islamic State has inspired immense fear among Americans and our
allies. My main purpose today is to discuss the nature of the threat it
poses, and to differentiate reasonable from unreasonable fear.
As a journalist, I have access to no information other than what is
publicly available and what I can discover in my own investigation and
conversations. Over the past two years, these conversations have
included a small number of individuals broadly supportive of the
Islamic State. None is currently in Islamic State territory, and their
excuses for not having traveled there to fight range from the plausible
(revoked passports, physical debility) to the unconvincing or lazy
(``God has not given me the time''). They all know people who have
immigrated, and in most cases, they agree openly with the Islamic
State's theology and politics. They recognize Abu Bakr al Baghdadi as
the political successor to the Prophet Muhammad, and they adhere to a
harsh, intolerant form of Islam practiced by a small minority of
Muslims worldwide. My opinions derive also from close reading of the
group's official propaganda; its leaders' statements; the open-source
chatter of those who support ISIL; and conversations with others who
watch the group closely, including Muslim and non-Muslim opponents and
analysts.
I will begin with the reasonable fear. Supporters of ISIL have
given me little reason to believe that their most brutal and intolerant
statements are mere bravado or exaggeration for effect. It is true that
they have welcomed my questions and treated me gently in person. In
most cases, they seem to appreciate the comforts of the developed,
peaceful countries where they live. But their conviction is real. When
they talk about putting the Shia to the sword, or reinstituting slavery
and other practices inconsistent with modern notions of human rights,
they do so without apology, and at times with evident gusto. Their
opinions are thoroughly premeditated, and they are based in an
interpretation of scripture and Islamic history, as well as practical
considerations. It would be folly to discount their sincerity or to
interpret their beliefs as idle, ill-considered, or foolish. The
fanaticism is real, and it does not reduce to other factors.
Second, the support for ISIL is broad as well as deep. The
demographics of supporters skew toward the young and male, as in all
wars. But the diversity of national origin, age, education, and class
is staggering--and it is not reflected in the cartoon version of the
ISIL recruit that one gets from some journalistic accounts. That media
composite has, in recent weeks, focused on the Belgian and French
criminal-underworld gangsters who appear to have perpetrated the
attacks in Brussels and Paris. I have little doubt that these types are
well-represented. But also present in the fraternity of ISIL fighters
are doctors, engineers, and a panoply of autodidacts in whose writing
and speech any educated person can recognize kindred spirits. The group
includes men well past peak battlefield age, as well as women of all
ages in non-military roles.
Third, the numbers are large--far greater than any Al Qaida's
during its heyday. These numbers deserve a moment's contemplation.
Whereas the forces under the command of Osama Bin Laden for the ``core
Al Qaida'' attacks on Western targets likely numbered in the hundreds
at their peak, tens of thousands of ISIL fighters have already
immigrated to Syria and Iraq. The counterterrorism strategies that have
kept the United States safe from Al Qaida have treated the group as a
conspiracy. But ISIL is a mass movement, and it will be impossible to
shut down plots against America or its allies entirely, using the same
tools. Attacks will occur, and they will terrify Americans. What will
increasingly define bravery and integrity among politicians will be
their ability to manage the expectations of their constituents rather
than to exploit their fears, and to react to these attacks with empathy
and rationality simultaneously.
I come, then, to the topic of unreasonable fear. First, we should
note the mismatch between the soaring ideological claims of ISIL and
its practical capability. Its mode of expansion in Syria and Iraq,
through fast movement of light-armored vehicles in familiar terrain,
does not readily transfer into most other places, and would certainly
fail in Turkey or heavily Kurdish or Shiite areas of Iraq. It requires
desperate, beleaguered local populations, with some base willingness to
contemplate a harsh revivalist Islamism as an alternative to the status
quo. The ideology of ISIL echoes Nazism in its genocidal ambitions and
tone, but the it is not matched by an equally powerful war machine. The
ISIL military is not one of the world's most formidable, and we should
not mistake the grandeur of its language for vast operational capacity.
Second, the Islamic State still prioritizes building a caliphate
and protecting its diminishing core territories--not in attacking
Western targets in spectacular ways, a la September 11. I make myself
hostage to fortune by advancing this claim. But it remains correct,
Brussels and Paris notwithstanding.
ISIL's propaganda has not deviated from its early message: that the
primary obligation of supporters overseas is to immigrate, and
only if they fail to do so should they undertake solo terrorist
efforts of their own. The propaganda does not leave doubt; it
is difficult to consume much of it without reaching the
conclusion that attacks on America are not the primary job of
American ISIL supporters still at home. They should buy a plane
ticket instead.
Spectacular attacks on the West are instead the job of dedicated
cells, directed from Syria and staffed at least in part by
fighters who have returned to their home countries for that
purpose. These cells are a conspiracy within the mass movement,
a little touch of Al Qaida within the Islamic State.
Journalists who have reported on the size of this conspiracy
have estimated its European members in the dozens, some of whom
are already captured or dead. These estimates are conservative,
and I would not be surprised at total mobilized figures in
triple digits.
ISIL brags relentlessly in its propaganda about its control of
territory. Its foreign attacks are calculated for maximum
effect with minimum blowblack. I suspect that central planning
and control allows ISIL to titrate the strength of these
attacks to avoid a response that would involve loss of core
territory. The attacks are nevertheless spectacular enough to
allow ISIL to dominate news cycles and remain first among
global jihadi equals. A spectacular mass attack on the US
would, I suspect, overshoot the mark.
None of the above points implies that ISIL will not attack the US
and Europe; on the contrary, I assume they will. And the group's
changing fortunes could easily alter its calculations and compel it to
invest heavily in foreign operations, at the expense of local ones.
However, when they do so, they will not mobilize their differentiating
strength, which is their enormous numbers. Instead, they will be
revisiting an Al Qaida strategy that we have begun to learn to counter.
Finally, although the conversion into a mass movement makes ISIL
less fragile and harder to counter, it carries important dangers for
ISIL as well. Mass movements resist central control, and they are
vulnerable to changes of style, culture, and generational preference.
ISIL has thrust itself into the consciousness of many, many Muslims,
and has thereby suggested itself as an outlet for existential,
political, and religious desires. It has no way of ensuring that next
year's seekers will direct their energies toward the same ends. A
sophisticated policy response to ISIL's rise will take into account not
only military and political dimensions, but also countercultural,
religious, and existential ones. Unfortunately, since government is
typically at its most hapless when trying to deal with these types of
issues, much work remains to be done--much of it not by government but
by civil society.
The Chairman. Dr. Levitt?
STATEMENT OF DR. MATTHEW LEVITT, DIRECTOR, STEIN PROGRAM ON
COUNTERTERRORISM AND INTELLIGENCE, THE WASHINGTON INSTITUTE FOR
NEAR EAST POLICY, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Dr. Levitt. Chairman Corker, Ranking Member Cardin,
distinguished members of the committee, it is an honor and a
privilege to appear before you today.
The committee has held numerous hearings on the so-called
Islamic State and the devastating impact of its barbarism in
the Middle East. But coming on the heels of the Brussels
bombings and the group's demonstrated intent and capability to
carry out terrorist attacks in the West, I would like to
address the spread of its transnational terrorism today.
Allow me to paint a picture. The office of the mayor of
Molenbeek, the municipality in Brussels, sits alongside a
picturesque, typically European cobblestone courtyard. Across
the square, within plain view of the municipal government
building, sits the home of Salah Abdeslam, the Islamic State
terrorist who was finally captured March 18th after evading
authorities since the November Paris attacks. Nothing but air
separates the two buildings, but they are a world apart. This
is the bifurcated Brussels that I saw coincidentally when I was
in Belgium a few days before the terrorist attacks that killed
31 and wounded hundreds.
And while your average citizen in Europe and in the United
States might feel extra anxiety and dismay with these attacks
and the sense of a metastasized danger, Western
counterterrorism officials are not entitled to feel that kind
of surprise because for anybody who was playing close enough
attention, the Islamic State's expanded capabilities and intent
have been evident for well over a year. We now know that the
Islamic State was already plotting attacks in the West as early
as late 2013.
But the real aha moment came not last month in Brussels but
in Verviers in the eastern part of the country in January 2015,
just 2 weeks after the Paris attacks on Charlie Hebdo and the
kosher supermarket. It was in that attack where it became clear
that the Islamic State had what Europol has described as an
external operations command and that it was, quote, going
global. Two things stood out from that plot that was thwarted,
largely thanks to a very successful sharing of intelligence.
One, that this was not your inspired lone offender, which
was the type of plot that we were most concerned about on the
part of the Islamic State until then, but that this was a
foreign-directed plot, much more carefully planned, with much
more capability.
And the second was the cross-jurisdictional nature of the
threat and simultaneously the awareness that as the EU
counterterrorism coordinator has put in his last report,
information sharing within the EU does not reflect the threat.
The fact that this threat was cross-jurisdictional, being
overseen by a person on a cell phone in Athens with operators
in Belgium and investigations going on in the Netherlands and
France and in Germany meant that sharing information across
these jurisdictional lines is going to be much, much more
important moving forward.
The fact is that what is happening in Europe is different
than what is happening in the Middle East in terms of the way
people are being radicalized. And what we are seeing as some
counter-radicalization officials within the municipality of
Molenbeek put it to me--and I have to say the silver lining is
the people I met who were working on these issues there were
tremendous, really fantastic. The way they put it to me is you
have here people who were going from zero to hero. You have
people who are looking for purpose, and they are being provided
that in the Islamic State. Recruiters offer a sense of family
to people from broken homes, of belonging to people who feel
disenfranchised from society, of empowerment to people who feel
discriminated against, of higher calling and purpose to people
who feel adrift. The recruiters pitch small groups of friends
together. You do not really belong here. You are not wanted
here. You cannot live here. You cannot get a job here. And only
then does the religious component come in. Clearly you should
not be living amongst the infidels. You mix in this gangster
culture and you have a combustible combination in these ghetto-
ized neighborhoods like Molenbeek where today's criminals are
tomorrow's terrorists and the radicalization process literally
is in hyper drive.
That, in part, is because of things that have happened in
the region. We need to remember that the conflict in Syria was
originally a civil war, and many Europeans who first went as
foreign terrorist fighters to that conflict, before the Islamic
State existed, were going not in a sense of offensive jihad,
but a defensive calling because no one else was doing it to go
defend women and children and fellow Sunnis. That most of those
people ended up, if they stayed, fighting with more radical
groups, Ahrar al-Sham, Jabhat al-Nusra, because they are the
ones who had the money and the weapons, means many of them did
get more radicalized, but that is not why they went in the
first place.
The other thing that changed the nature of radicalization
and sped it up significantly is the founding of the Islamic
State. We focus on its genocide and barbarism, obviously, but
for people who are looking for this purpose, to be told come in
and get in at the ground level to reestablish the caliphate,
just like the original followers of the Prophet Muhammad, for
someone who is adrift this is an empowering message.
The fact of the matter is that as we move forward looking
at what we need to do in Europe, in particular, and the West
more broadly, this is something that is going to have to
involve law enforcement agents and intelligence officers and
greater intelligence sharing and moving information up to the
SIS, Schengen Information Sharing system, borders. Sure.
But the more important activists are going to be the social
workers and the teachers and the people in these communities.
In Molenbeek, for 15 months now, they have been putting this in
place to their credit, but the number of countering violent
extremism police officers they have, plused up after the
November attacks, for a community of 100,000 people is eight.
And the prevention officers who are working in that capacity in
a civilian capacity, who were brilliant, three. So there is
much more we need to do as we move forward.
And I thank you for the opportunity to testify this
morning.
[Dr. Levitt's prepared statement follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. Matthew Levitt, Fromer-Wexler Fellow and
Director, Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, The
Washington Institute for Near East Policy \1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Portions of this testimony first appeared as ``The Islamic
State's Lone Wolf Era is Over,'' Foreign Policy, March 24, 2016, http:/
/foreignpolicy.com/2016/03/24/the-islamic-states-lone-wolf-era-is-over/
and as ``My Journey through Brussels' Terrorist Safe Haven,'' Politico,
March 27, 2016, http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/03/
brussels-attacks-terrorist-safe-haven-213768. My thanks to both
publications for allowing me to work through these ideas on their
pages, and for providing formal permission allowing me to use portions
of that material here.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chairman Corker, Ranking Member Cardin, distinguished members of
the committee, it is an honor and privilege to appear before you today.
This committee has held numerous hearings on the so-called Islamic
State and the devastating impact of its barbarism on the Middle East.
But coming on the heels of the Brussels bombings, and the group's
demonstrated intent and capability to carry out terrorist attacks in
the West, it is the spread of this transnational terrorism that I would
like to address today.
Allow me to paint a picture: The office of the mayor of the
Molenbeek municipality in Brussels sits alongside a picturesque,
typically European cobblestone square. Across the square, within plain
view of the municipal government, sits the family home of Salah
Abdeslam, the Islamic State terrorist who was finally captured on March
18th after evading authorities since the November Paris attacks.
Nothing separates the two buildings, but they are a world apart.
This is the bifurcated Brussels I saw when, coincidentally, I was
in Belgium a few days before the terrorist attacks that killed 31
people and wounded hundreds. I was there to meet with senior
counterterrorism, intelligence and law enforcement officials, as well
as with local officials in the troubled municipality of Molenbeek, the
subsection of Brussels where Abdeslam grew up and which even
Molenbeek's mayor, Francois Schepmans, describes as ``a breeding ground
for violence.'' \2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ Robert-Jan Bartunek and Alastair Macdonald, ``Guns, God and
grievances--Belgium's Islamist 'airbase','' Reuters, November 16, 2015,
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-shooting-belgium-guns-insight-
idUSKCN0T504J20151116
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Expansion of the Islamic State Terrorist Threat to the West
The Brussels bombings have made it plain that the scale of the
threat posed by the Islamic State to the West is far larger than most
Westerners had previously thought. That threat is no longer limited to
the radicalization of the 5,000-6,000 European citizens who left the
comfort and safety of their homes to fight alongside the Islamic State
in Syria, Iraq and, more recently, Libya.\3\ Nor has it only expanded
to include so-called ``lone-wolf'' plots--self-organized attacks
carried out by homegrown radicals. The Brussels bombings have made it
painfully clear that the Islamic State is determined to plan and direct
attacks in the West that are far more sophisticated and lethal than
such small-scale mayhem.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ ``State of play on implementation of the statement of the
Members of the European Council of 12 February 2015, the JHA Council
Conclusions of 20 November 2015, and the Conclusions of the European
Council of 18 December 2015,'' EU Counter-Terrorism Coordinator,
Council of the European Union, March 1, 2016, http://
www.statewatch.org/news/2016/mar/eu-council-c-t-coordinator-report-
6450-16.pdf
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
It would be understandable if the public expressed anxiety and
dismay about this metastasized danger. But the West's counterterrorism
officials are not entitled to feel surprise. For anyone paying close
enough attention, the Islamic State's expanded capabilities have been
evident for well over a year.
After the U.S.-led coalition began launching airstrikes against
Islamic State targets in August 2014, the group's spokesman, Abu
Muhammad al-Adnani, responded with a call for supporters to carry out
lone-offender terrorist attacks targeting the West.
If you can kill a disbelieving American or European--especially
the spiteful and filthy French--or an Australian, or a
Canadian, or any other disbeliever from the disbelievers waging
war, including the citizens of the countries that entered into
a coalition against the Islamic State, then rely upon Allah,
and kill him in any manner or way however it may be.\4\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ ``The Failed Crusade,'' Dabiq, Issue 4, https://
azelin.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/the-islamic-state-e2809cdc481biq-
magazine-422.pdf
Since then, Islamic State supporters and sympathizers have tried to
answer his call. The January 2015 attacks in Paris on the offices of
the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a kosher grocery store caused
some confusion because some operatives appeared to be tied to al Qaeda
in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), while others were inspired by the
Islamic State. Looking back, however, it appears that these terrorist
``frenemies'' (the groups they respectively affiliated themselves with
were fighting one another in a jihadi civil war back in Syria) were
still part of the lone-offender phenomenon. They may have been inspired
by groups based in the Middle East, but they were not directed by them.
Lost in the shuffle after the horror of those attacks was the
critical turning point in Islamic State terrorism in Europe: the plots
that were averted by raids in Verviers, Belgium, a week after the
Charlie Hebdo attack. These raids were a watershed moment for European
counterterrorism officials, and Belgian authorities in particular, who
were acting on information that the cell was plotting imminent and
large-scale attacks in Belgium.\5\ Police discovered automatic
firearms, precursors for the explosive triacetone triperoxide (TATP), a
body camera, multiple cell phones, handheld radios, police uniforms,
fraudulent identification documents, and a large quantity of cash
during the raid.\6\ Information from European and Middle Eastern
intelligence services indicated the raids thwarted ``major terrorist
attacks,'' most likely in Belgium, though the investigation into the
group's activities spanned several European countries, including
France, Greece, Spain, and the Netherlands.\7\ The leader of the plot,
Belgian citizen Abdelhamid Abaaoud, directed the operation from a safe
house in Athens, Greece, using a cell phone, while other group members
operated in several other European countries, investigators determined.
``Items recovered during searches of residences affiliated with the
cell suggest the group's plotting may have included the use of small
arms, improvised explosive devices, and the impersonation of police
officers,'' according to an intelligence assessment by the U.S.
Department of Homeland Security.\8\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ James Kanter, ``2 Suspects Killed in Gun battle in Belgian
Antiterror Raid,'' New York Times, January 15, 2015, http://
www.nytimes.com/2015/01/16/world/europe/police-raid-belgium.html?--r=1
\6\ ``Future ISIL Operations in the West Could Resemble Disrupted
Belgian Plot,'' Department of Homeland Security Intelligence
Assessment, May 13, 2015, https://info.publicintelligence.net/DHS-
FutureOperationsISIL.pdf
\7\ Paul Cruickshank, Mariano Castillo andCatherine E. Shoichet
``Belgian operation thwarted 'major terrorist attacks,' kills 2
suspects,'' January 15, 2015, http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/15/world/
belgium-anti-terror-operation/; ``Future ISIL Operations in the West
Could Resemble Disrupted Belgian Plot,'' Department of Homeland
Security Intelligence Assessment, May 13, 2015, https://
info.publicintelligence.net/DHS-FutureOperationsISIL.pdf
\8\ ``Future ISIL Operations in the West Could Resemble Disrupted
Belgian Plot,'' Department of Homeland Security Intelligence
Assessment, May 13, 2015, https://info.publicintelligence.net/DHS-
FutureOperationsISIL.pdf
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Authorities quickly began to appreciate that the threat facing
Europe was no longer limited to lone offenders inspired by the group.
It now included trained and experienced foreign terrorist fighters
coordinating attacks, directed by the Islamic State, across multiple
jurisdictions. In the aftermath of the Verviers raid 13 arrests were
made in Belgium, two in France, and one arrest was made in Greece,
linked to a safe house in Athens. According to the same DHS
intelligence assessment, the members of the cell were able to
communicate and travel unimpeded across borders to facilitate attack
planning.\9\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\9\ ``Future ISIL Operations in the West Could Resemble Disrupted
Belgian Plot,'' Department of Homeland Security Intelligence
Assessment, May 13, 2015, https://info.publicintelligence.net/DHS-
FutureOperationsISIL.pdf
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Authorities quickly honed in on the ringleader of the Belgium
plots, Abaaoud, also known as Abu Umar al-Baljiki. But despite a
Europe-wide manhunt, Abaaoud managed to elude authorities, escaping
from Belgium to Syria, and then back. He later bragged about his escape
in an interview with Dabiq, the Islamic State's propaganda magazine:
``My name and picture were all over the news yet I was able to stay in
their homeland, plan operations against them, and leave safely when
doing so became necessary.'' \10\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\10\ ``From Hypocrisy to Apostasy: The Extinction of the
Grayzone,'' Dabiq, Issue 7, https://azelin.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/
the-islamic-state-e2809cdc481biq-magazine-722.pdf
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The threat to Europe slowly became clearer still. In April 2015,
French authorities arrested an Islamic State operative who had called
for medical assistance after accidentally shooting himself. In his
apartment, authorities found weapons, ammunition, and notes on
potential targets, including churches, which he had been told to do by
someone inside Syria, according to Paris prosecutor Francois
Molins.\11\ A U.S. intelligence bulletin reported the Islamic State
operative had links to Abaaoud and had previously expressed interest in
traveling to Syria.\12\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\11\ ``France police arrest man 'planning to attack churches',''
BBC, April 22, 2015, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32409253;
Tony Todd, ``'Syrian accomplice' told Paris suspect to attack
churches,'' France 24, April 23, 2015, http://www.france24.com/en/
20150422-paris-terror-IS-al-qaeda-church-attack-syrian-accomplice
\12\ ``Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures Used in the 13 November
2015 Paris Attacks,'' DHS, FBI, NCTC Joint Intelligence Bulletin,
November 23, 2015, https://info.publicintelligence.net/DHS-FBI-NCTC-
ParisAttacks.pdf
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
By May 2015, U.S. law enforcement concluded that a sea change had
decisively occurred in the nature of the Islamic State terrorist
threat. While threats remain from Islamic State-inspired lone
offenders, the U.S. intelligence assessment concluded that future
Islamic State operations would resemble the elaborate disrupted
Verviers plot.\13\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\13\ ``Future ISIL Operations in the West Could Resemble Disrupted
Belgian Plot,'' Department of Homeland Security Intelligence
Assessment, May 13, 2015, https://info.publicintelligence.net/DHS-
FutureOperationsISIL.pdf
The plot disrupted by Belgian authorities in January 2015 is
the first instance in which a large group of terrorists
possibly operating under ISIL direction has been discovered and
may indicate the group has developed the capability to launch
more complex operations in the West. We differentiate the
complex, centrally planned plotting in Belgium from other,
more-simplistic attacks by ISIL-inspired or directed
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
individuals, which could occur with little to no warning.
The multi-jurisdictional nature of that plot cemented for European
and U.S. counterterrorism officials the importance of information
sharing across national agencies, but implementing the necessary
reforms would be slow in coming.
The pace of the Islamic State's foreign-directed plots sped up in
the summer of 2015. In mid-August, a man was arrested while attempting
to carry out an attack on a concert in France. The man, who had only
recently returned from a six-day trip to Syria, told police he was
ordered to carry out the attack by a man fitting Abaaoud's description.
Later that month, off-duty U.S. servicemen managed to subdue a gunman
attempting to carry out an attack on a Thalys train traveling from
Amsterdam to Paris.
Luck ran out when terrorists struck Paris on Nov. 13, 2015. These
multiple coordinated attacks marked a departure from past Islamic State
plots in the level of training and degree of operational security
executed by the attackers. According to the U.S. intelligence bulletin,
using an acronym for the Islamic State, the November Paris attacks
``demonstrated a greater degree of coordination and use of multiple
tactics, resulting in higher casualties than has been seen in any
previous ISIL Western attack.'' \14\ The tactics, techniques, and
procedures used in the attacks were quickly identified by law
enforcement as the type of attacks the West should be expecting from
now on.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\14\ ``Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures Used in the 13 November
2015 Paris Attacks,'' DHS, FBI, NCTC Joint Intelligence Bulletin,
November 23, 2015, https://info.publicintelligence.net/DHS-FBI-NCTC-
ParisAttacks.pdf
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
According to the latest EUROPOL counterterrorism report, the Paris
attacks and subsequent investigations demonstrate a shift by the
Islamic State toward ``going global'' in its terrorism campaign. The
Islamic State has developed an ``external action command,'' EUROPOL
notes, which ``trained for special forces style attacks in the
international environment.'' The police organization's warning for
Europe was stark: ``There is every reason to expect that [the Islamic
State], [Islamic State-]inspired terrorists or another religiously
inspired terrorist group will undertake a terrorist attack somewhere in
Europe again, but particularly in France, intended to cause mass
casualties amongst the civilian population.'' \15\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\15\ ``Changes in modus operandi of Islamic State terrorist
attacks,'' Europol, January 18, 2016, https://www.europol.europa.eu/
sites/default/files/publications/changes--in--modus--operandi--of--is--
in--terrorist--attacks.pdf
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
If the evolution of the Islamic State threat to Europe was not yet
perfectly clear after the Paris attacks, it has become so in the wake
of the Brussels bombings. And yet, while Europe is now fully aware of
the scope of the threat, it remains unprepared to cope with it. This
includes both shortcomings in the counterterrorism capabilities of
European states, as well as their efforts to integrate immigrant
communities into the larger European societies in which they live.
The counterterrorism challenges were underscored by the inability
of security services to find Salah Abdeslam for some four months after
the November Paris attacks. More broadly, the latest report by the
European Union's counterterrorism coordinator revealed that not all
member states have established electronic connections to Interpol at
their border crossings.\16\ The report was uncharacteristically blunt,
finding that ``information sharing still does not reflect the threat.''
\17\ In one glaring example, Europol's Focal Point Travellers database
has recorded only 2,786 verified foreign terrorist fighters despite
``well-founded estimates that around 5,000 EU citizens have traveled to
Syria and Iraq to join ISIL and other extremist groups,'' the report
said. Worse still, more than 90 percent of the reports of verified
foreign terrorist fighters came from just five member states.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\16\ ``State of play on implementation of the statement of the
Members of the European Council of 12 February 2015, the JHA Council
Conclusions of 20 November 2015, and the Conclusions of the European
Council of 18 December 2015,'' EU Counter-Terrorism Coordinator,
Council of the European Union, March 1, 2016, http://
www.statewatch.org/news/2016/mar/eu-council-c-t-coordinator-report-
6450-16.pdf
\17\ ``State of play on implementation of the statement of the
Members of the European Council of 12 February 2015, the JHA Council
Conclusions of 20 November 2015, and the Conclusions of the European
Council of 18 December 2015,'' EU Counter-Terrorism Coordinator,
Council of the European Union, March 1, 2016, http://
www.statewatch.org/news/2016/mar/eu-council-c-t-coordinator-report-
6450-16.pdf
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
But the social integration challenges are more daunting still. In
Belgium in particular, governance is complicated by the extremely
federal system of government, divided not only across local, regional,
and federal levels of government, but also by geography, language, and
culture. But across Europe, solving the long ignored problem of
disenfranchised immigrant communities is going to take more time and
money, both of which are in short supply.
And these two sets of challenges--counterterrorism and intelligence
on the one hand, and social and economic integration on the other--are
intricately interconnected. The economic factors are not a primary
factor of radicalization, Belgian officials told me, but they are a
powerful reinforcing factor feeding an identity crisis centered on lack
of opportunity, broken families, psychological fragility, and cultural
and religious tension. With an unemployment rate as high as 30 percent,
it should not be surprising that the vast majority of Belgian recruits
to the Islamic State are small-time criminals.\18\ One Molenbeek
recruiter, who is now in jail, approached local youth in the
neighborhood's ubiquitous storefront mosques and convinced them to
donate some of the proceeds of their petty crime to fund the travel of
foreign fighters to Syria.\19\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\18\ Valentina Pop, ``Islamic State Terror Cell Found Refuge in
Brussels District,'' Wall Street Journal, March 23, 2016, http://
www.wsj.com/articles/islamic-state-terror-cell-found-refuge-in-
brussels-district-1458694455
\19\ Matthew Dalton, '' Attacks Highlight Belgian Failure to Roll
Up Extremist Network,'' Wall Street Journal, March 23, 2016, http://
www.wsj.com/articles/attacks-highlight-belgian-failure-to-roll-up-
extremist-network-1458694796
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Today's petty criminals are now tomorrow's potential suicide
bombers. And they will not be carrying out their attacks in faraway war
zones but rather in the heart of the countries in which they grew up.
The U.S. intelligence assessment written after the November Paris
attacks presciently warned that ``the involvement of a large number of
operatives and group leaders based in multiple countries in future
ISIL-linked plotting could create significant obstacles in the
detection and disruption of preoperational activities.'' \20\ That is
certainly the case, but it is only half the problem. The still greater
challenge European countries now face is contending with the European
Islamic State terrorists being groomed today within their own borders.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\20\ ``Future ISIL Operations in the West Could Resemble Disrupted
Belgian Plot,'' Department of Homeland Security Intelligence
Assessment, May 13, 2015, https://info.publicintelligence.net/DHS-
FutureOperationsISIL.pdf
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fast Track from Zero to Hero
The harsh fact is that communities ripe for radicalization exist
across Europe--including in the heart of the capital of the European
Union--and no one quite knows what to do about it. The day of my visit
to Molenbeek I first rode a few quick stops on the Brussels metro from
my hotel in the EU district to Molenbeek, where I met the mayor at her
office together with police chiefs, members of the local police
department's ``counter-radicalization cell'' and civilian ``prevention
officers'' who had just concluded their weekly status-check on the
local government's counter-radicalization, and social integration
efforts. Their goal seems Sisyphean: reintegrating returning foreign
terrorist fighters back into society and preventing still more
disenfranchised Muslim youth from looking to the Islamic State for
purpose and belonging.
The problem: Molenbeek is like another world, another culture,
festering in the heart of the West. Only eight of 114 imams in Brussels
speak any of the local languages. The majority Muslim municipality of
about 100,000 people is the second poorest in the country, with the
second youngest population, high unemployment and crime rates, and a
nearly 10% annual population turnover that makes it a highly transient
community. By some accounts, nearly a third of Molenbeek residents are
unemployed.\21\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\21\ Valentina Pop, ``Islamic State Terror Cell Found Refuge in
Brussels District,'' Wall Street Journal, March 23, 2016, http://
www.wsj.com/articles/islamic-state-terror-cell-found-refuge-in-
brussels-district-1458694455
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unsurprisingly, Molenbeek has become an almost ideal recruiting
ground for the Islamic State, and Belgium has the highest number per
capita of Western foreign fighters who have traveled to join the
Islamic State in Syria and Iraq (and, more recently, Libya). And the
majority of these came from Brussels, and Molenbeek in particular,
according to Interior Minister Jan Jambon. The local municipality has
been described as one of a few Islamic State ``hotbeds of recruitment''
around the world.\22\ In the words of Belgian Prime Minster Charles
Michel, ``Almost every time, there is a link to Molenbeek.'' This
week's bombings were no exception.\23\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\22\ ``Foreign Fighters: An Updated Assessment of the Flow of
Foreign Fighters into Syria and Iraq,'' The Soufan Group, December
2015, http://soufangroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/TSG--
ForeignFightersUpdate3.pdf
\23\ Robert-Jan Bartunek and Alastair Macdonald, ``Guns, God and
grievances--Belgium's Islamist 'airbase','' Reuters, November 16, 2015,
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-shooting-belgium-guns-insight-
idUSKCN0T504J20151116
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Recruiters offer a sense of family to people from broken homes; of
belonging to people who feel disenfranchised from society; of
empowerment to people who feel discriminated against; and of a higher
calling and purpose to people who feel adrift. Recruiters pitch small
groups of friends and family together: ``You don't really belong here.
You are not wanted here. You can't live here. You can't get a job
here.'' Only then comes the religious extremist part: ``Clearly, you
should not be living among the infidels.''
What Islamic State offers them, in a nutshell, is a fast track from
zero to hero.
Mix in a gangster culture and you have a combustible combination.
In ghettoized neighborhoods like Molenbeek, today's criminals are
tomorrow's terrorists, and the radicalization process is in hyperdrive.
As a result, ``these guys are not stereotypical Islamists. They gamble,
drink, do drugs. They are lady killers, wear Armani, fashionable
haircuts. And they live off crime,'' according to an article published
by Pro Publica.\24\ Time and again, it turns out the local police were
aware of suspects like Abdeslam, but only as small-time thieves. ``We
knew of several Paris-related suspects before,'' a police officer told
me as I sat down with the mayor, ``but not for terrorism reasons, just
petty crime and small incidents.''
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\24\ Sebastian Rotella, ``Belgium's Deadly Circles of Terror,''
ProPublica, March 22, 2016, https://www.propublica.org/article/
belgiums-deadly-circles-of-terror
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The mayor quickly chimed in, determined to be clear that I
understood there was no way to know these crooks had suddenly become
terrorists, adding ``there was no suspicion of radicalization.'' But
there is one other common thread that runs through all these cases:
``The people who leave [for Syria and Iraq] today are all attracted to
violence,'' mayor Schepmans said. Dutch officials echo this sentiment,
noting in a recent study that ``everyone who has travelled since 2014
to the area under [the Islamic State's] control will have seen the
propaganda images of atrocities against `non-believers'.'' \25\ They
know what they are getting into.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\25\ ``Life with ISIS: the Myth Unraveled,'' General Intelligence
and Security Service, Ministry of the interior and Kingdom Relations,
January 18, 2016, https://english.aivd.nl/publications/publications/
2016/01/15/publication-life-with-isis-the-myth-unvravelled
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
And while there is a component of religious extremism, Belgian
officials stress, it is only skin deep. The suspects appear to be
mainly criminals who are attracted to something that gives them
identity and a sense of empowerment. They are radicalized to the idea
of the Islamic state far more than to Islam. ``Salafism [a radical
Islamist ideology] is mainstream in Belgium,'' was a refrain I heard
from several of the officials I met. ``Not all Salafists are
terrorists,'' they stressed, ``but all our terrorists were targeted for
recruitment by Salafists in these neighborhood extremist networks.''
Syrian Civil War, Islamic State, and Radicalization in Hyper Drive
It is important to consider as context how the war in Syria
transformed the nature of radicalization and recruitment of foreign
terrorist fighters for the Islamic State (and, indeed, for other
Islamist violent extremist groups). Initially, before the Islamic State
existed, foreigners traveled to fight in Syria to defend fellow Sunni
civilians and defend communities against persecution by the Assad
regime. That was a much easier and faster radicalization process than
had been the case under al-Qaeda. A person only had to be convinced to
fight a defensive battle to protect Sunni civilians from the gas
attacks, barrel bombings and starvation campaigns of the Assad regime,
not an al-Qaeda-style offensive Jihad against the West.
As the conflict dragged on more people began to fight with the
Jabhat al-Nusra's and Ahrar al-Sham's of the world because these more
radical groups enjoyed greater financial support and therefore had
access to more money and better weapons. Over time, many people who
went to fight in Syria for altruistic reasons became increasingly
radicalized by exposure to these more extreme groups. Some would later
join the Islamic State.
The creation of the Islamic State and its so-called caliphate
further fueled the pace of radicalization. For many vulnerable, at-risk
Muslim men and women in Europe, the Islamic State provided the
opportunity to be a part of building something exciting and important.
They were being invited to get in on the early building stages of
reestablishing a caliphate, just like the early followers of the
Prophet Muhammad, making them part of something historic and bigger
than themselves.
The Islamic State simplifies world conflicts into black and white
``which allows someone the opportunity of being the 'hero'--an
empowering narrative for a disenfranchised, disengaged individual.''
\26\ And while the Syrian civil war and then the founding of a so-
called caliphate significantly sped up the pace of the radicalization
process, there is today a powerful undercurrent that draws in at-risk
youth having less to do with Islam or Assad but with providing ``the
thrill of being part of something bigger. It is a youth subculture ...
and peer groups play a big role.'' \27\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\26\ Danica Kirka, ``ISIS is luring normal Western women with
troubling simplicity,'' Business Insider, May 28, 2015, http://
www.businessinsider.com/young-women-are-joining-isis-for-more-than-
marriage-2015-5
\27\ Jason Burke, ``The story of a radicalisation: 'I was not
thinking my thoughts. I was not myself','' The Guardian, November 26,
2015, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/26/radicalisation-
islam-isis-maysa-not-thinking-my-thoughts-not-myself
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
After the Paris attacks in November, Belgian Police intercepted a
phone call to Brussels from Syria and overheard a Belgian militant
inquiring about his friend Bilal Hadfi, who had been a suicide bomber
in Paris. The militant asked what his friends were saying about Bilal
back in the ``sector,'' a reference to Molenbeek where many of the
Paris attackers grew up. ``Are they talking about him? Are they
praising him? Are they saying he was a lion?'' the militant asked. His
particular interest in his peer's opinion of Hadfi made one thing
perfectly clear: for him and others like him the Islamic State was more
about personal glory than anything else.
The Road Ahead
When I met with the mayor of Molenbeek, she was frank about the
task ahead in getting a handle on radicalization in the municipality
but was equally blunt in describing the area as a victim of lack of
government attention and investment. There is also confusion at the
government level about how to handle the problem. Municipal authorities
stressed that actual counterterrorism is the job of the Federal Police,
who maintain a consolidated list of some 670 terrorist suspects,
including people who have gone to fight in Syria and Iraq (and, more
recently, Libya), returning foreign fighters, and individuals who seem
inclined to become foreign terrorist fighters. A separate federal list
focuses on priority criminal cases (due to the increasingly common
links between the two, authorities plan to merge the two lists).
According to local officials, the municipality has documented at least
85 cases of people who have been radicalized to terrorism, some of whom
have left to join the Islamic State in Syria and others who have
returned.\28\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\28\ Valentina Pop, ``Islamic State Terror Cell Found Refuge in
Brussels District,'' Wall Street Journal, March 23, 2016, http://
www.wsj.com/articles/islamic-state-terror-cell-found-refuge-in-
brussels-district-1458694455
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Following the Brussels bombings, authorities are laser-focused not
only on finding all the perpetrators and their accomplices, but mapping
out the network of Islamic State terrorists on the ground in Belgium.
That will be no small task, but even that kind of counterterrorism
success will only go so far towards reestablishing a sense of security
in Belgium in particular and Europe more generally. Hardening targets,
implementing greater border security measures, and enhancing
intelligence collection and information sharing are critical and still
subpar, but these tools will only help us contend with yesterday's
threat; they won't help us get ahead of tomorrow's.
The good news is that Belgian authorities have now realized the
need to build a prevention program. And to be fair, that realization
came not last week but 15 months ago, when Belgian authorities raided a
residence in Verviers a week after the Charlie Hebdo attack. The raids
thwarted ``major terrorist attacks" in Belgium and led to the
intensification of ``Plan R''--the government's national counter-
radicalization plan. The plan predated the Verviers raid, on paper, but
it has now led to tangible changes. A Coordination Unit for Threat
Analysis (CUTA) serves as a fusion center between federal level
national security agencies and local police departments. Nearly 18,000
police officers have been trained to spot potential radicalization
identifiers under the Community Policing to Prevent Radicalization
(COPRA) initiative. And the Federal Police have instituted a ``grasping
approach'' to radicalization cases in which police are instructed to
``follow up and don't let go'' until there is no longer any threat the
person in question is being radicalized to violence.
In the months before the Brussels bombings, local officials also
developed ``Plan Molenbeek'' to address what they described to me as
``the need for proper institutions to address the unique issues facing
the municipality.'' They remain desperately understaffed, but they have
already trained 700 community field workers (including teachers and
social workers) to spot signs of radicalization and partner with
prevention officers to develop a customized intervention for each case.
They meet with counterparts in other municipalities facing similar
issues to share lessons learned. This is especially important, one
official told me, since ``we are all learning by doing.''
Still, since the November Paris attacks, tracking cases of people
on the road to radicalization has only gotten harder. ``Paris was a
game-changer,'' a local police officer in Molenbeek told me. ``Since
then it's been like a tsunami of information flowing in from all our
partners, including concerned members of the community, federal
agencies, and our own civilian prevention officers.'' Those prevention
officers play a critical role as civilian employees of the municipality
focused solely on integrating people into society, but they are
severely understaffed. The local police also have a counter-
radicalization cell, but they too lack resources. Even with a staffing
boost after the November Paris attacks, the cell numbers only eight
officers. ``Most of the people we come across are youngsters,
unemployed, and often involved in criminal activities,'' prevention
officers told me. ``We try to integrate people we see into society,
that's the most important thing now, ideally.'' A police officer chimed
in, ``And we prosecute, as necessary.''
Last month, as Belgian and French police officers prepared to raid
a suspected Islamic State safe-house, I was sitting with a senior
Belgian counterterrorism official at his downtown headquarters. As we
discussed the Islamic State threat to Europe in general, and Belgium in
particular--about five miles from the site of the raid, but a world
apart--the disconnect between the scale of the threat and the
preparedness of the response became starkly clear. The manhunt for
Abdeslam focused the attention of Belgian counterterrorism officials.
Another terrorist was killed in a shootout at the raid that day, an
Algerian whose body was found next to a rifle, ammunition, a book on
Salafism, and an Islamic State flag.\29\
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\29\ Greg Botelho, ``Brussels shooting: ISIS flag, ammo found in
raid tied to Paris attacks,'' CNN March 16, 2016, http://www.cnn.com/
2016/03/16/europe/brussels-raid-paris-attack/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
But police found clues pointing to Abdeslam, including his
fingerprints. Three days later, police finally captured Abdeslam, who
was being sheltered by family members in Molenbeek, the Brussels
municipality where he grew up, not far from the family home. But as we
now know, authorities barely questioned Abdeslam between the time of
his arrest and the Brussels bombings. Moreover, Turkish authorities had
warned Belgian and Dutch authorities about one of the Brussels bombers,
who they had turned away at the border and were sending back to Europe
as what they specifically described as a ``foreign terrorist fighter.''
``We got him,'' an official excitedly tweeted at the news of
Abdeslam's capture. In truth the job has just begun. But after meeting
with officials in Molenbeek, I allowed myself to feel just a touch of
optimism: the police and prevention officers I met in Molenbeek were
among the most impressive I've met anywhere. ``We are discovering on a
daily basis new ways to work in the prevention space,'' one of them
commented as our meeting came to a close. The problem: What they need
is in short supply: more resources and more time.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Director Olsen?
STATEMENT OF HON. MATTHEW G. OLSEN, FORMER DIRECTOR, NATIONAL
COUNTERTERRORISM CENTER, WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. Olsen. Thank you very much, Chairman and Ranking Member
Cardin, distinguished members of the committee. I am honored to
be here this morning.
We meet this morning in the wake, as you mentioned,
Chairman, of the horrific attacks in Brussels and recently in
Paris and in San Bernardino. These massacres serve as a
sobering reminder of the complexity of the terrorism challenges
that we face.
By all measures, ISIS presents the most urgent threat to
our security in the world today. The group has seized and is
governing territory and, at the same time, is securing the
allegiance of other terrorist groups across the Middle East and
North Africa. ISIS' sanctuary enables it to recruit, train, and
execute external attacks, as we have seen now in Europe, and it
enables it to incite assailants around the world. It has
recruited thousands of militants to its cause, and it uses
propaganda to radicalize countless others in the West. At the
same time, we continue to face an enduring threat from Al Qaeda
and its affiliates who maintain the intent and capability to
attack us here in the West.
In my brief opening remarks, I will focus on the nature of
the terrorist threats, and I will touch on some of the ways I
think we need to consider enhancing our strategy to confront
ISIS.
Now, I will begin with the spread of ISIS. There are really
three overarching factors in my view that account for the rise
and rapid success of ISIS.
First, it has exploited the civil war in Syria and lack of
security in northern Iraq.
Second, it has proven to be an effective fighting force.
Now, since September 2014, the U.S.-led military coalition has
halted ISIS momentum, reversed some of the group's territorial
gains, but ISIS has adapted in the face of these other
coalition airstrikes.
And then third, ISIS views itself as the new leader of a
global jihad. It has developed an unprecedented ability to
communicate and radicalize its followers around the world.
Today, in terms of its strength, ISIS has up to 25,000
fighters in Iraq and Syria. It has also branched out, taking
advantage of the chaos and unrest in places like Yemen and
Libya to expand to new territory and enlist new followers. ISIS
can now claim formal alliances with eight groups across an arc
of instability stretching from the Middle East across North
Africa.
And from this position, ISIS poses a multifaceted threat to
us here in the United States and, as well, to our allies in
Europe. In the past 2 years, ISIS reportedly has directed or
inspired more than 80 external attacks in as many as 20
nations. And then, of course, most concerning, the recent
attacks in Brussels and Paris demonstrate that ISIS now has
both the intent and capability to direct and execute
sophisticated, coordinated attacks in Western Europe.
Here at home, the threat from ISIS is on a smaller scale,
but it is still persistent. We have experienced attacks that
ISIS has inspired in San Bernardino and Garland, Texas.
I think several factors are driving this trend toward the
increasing pace and scale of terrorism violence.
First is the sheer number of Europeans and other Westerners
who have gone to Syria to join the fight there. More than 6,000
Europeans have traveled to Syria. Among the Europeans who have
left to go to Syria, hundreds have returned to their own
countries, typically battle-hardened, further trained, and
further radicalized.
Here, while the principal threat in the United States is
from homegrown ISIS-inspired actors, the fact that many
Americans have traveled to Syria and Iraq to fight, along with
the thousands more who have gone from visa waiver countries in
Europe, makes it clear that we need to be concerned about the
possibility of a Paris or Brussels style attack here at home in
the United States.
Secondly, ISIS has developed more advanced tactics in
planning and executing these attacks. They stage coordinated
attacks. They have effectively hampered police responses. They
appear to have achieved a certain level of proficiency in bomb-
making.
And third, existing networks of extremists in Europe are
providing the infrastructure to support these attacks.
Looking more broadly, the rise of ISIS should be viewed as
a manifestation of where we are with the global jihadist
movement today. That movement has expanded and diversified
after the Arab Spring. There are essentially four failed states
in North Africa and the Middle East, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and
Libya, that provide safe haven for these groups.
Now, looking at the strategy to defeat ISIS, the committee
has held a number of hearings and is familiar with the
administration's strategy, the combination of military efforts,
the counterterrorism lines of effort. Let me focus on ways I
think we need to consider augmenting that strategy.
One is a surge in our intelligence capabilities. A surge
would enhance our technical surveillance capabilities, develop
sources to penetrate ISIS and form a closer relationship with
intelligence services. This would address the gaps that exist
because of the use of encryption, and it would address the gap
that exists because of the illegal disclosures of our
intelligence surveillance capabilities, which are hampering our
intelligence community today.
Second, I think we should look to work in concert with
Europe to build Europe's ability to share information and to
improve its watch listing capabilities. Today, European nations
do not always alert each other when they encounter a terrorism
suspect at a border.
And then finally, we should redouble our efforts to counter
ISIS on the ideological front, beginning with the recognition
that both in Europe and in the United States we need to build
and maintain the trust of Muslim communities. That also means
that we need to unambiguously oppose the hateful rhetoric that
erodes that trust.
Mr. Chairman, in conclusion, we should not underestimate
the capacity of ISIS and other groups to adapt and evade our
defenses and to carry out acts of violence both here at home
and around the world. But no terrorist group, not ISIS, is
invincible. The enduring lessons of 9/11 are that we can
overcome and defeat terrorism with strength, unity, and
adherence to our founding values and that American leadership
is indispensable to that fight.
I look forward to your questions.
[Mr. Olsen's prepared statement follows:]
Prepared Statement of Matthew G. Olsen, Former
Director of the National Counterterrorism Center
Thank you Chairman Corker, Ranking Member Cardin, and distinguished
members of the committee. I am honored to have this opportunity to
appear before you to discuss the spread of the Islamic State in Iraq
and Syria and the threat from transnational terrorism.
We meet this morning in the wake of the horrific attacks in
Brussels last month and the recent attacks Paris and in San Bernardino
late last year. These massacres serve both as a sobering reminder of
the complexity of the threats we face from terrorist groups of global
reach and as a call for action in the ongoing struggle against
terrorism. Indeed, these attacks give this hearing added significance,
as you convene to examine the threat to the United States and our
interests around the world and the steps we should take to counter
terrorist groups both at home and abroad.
By any measure, ISIS presents the most urgent threat to our
security in the world today. The group has exploited the conflict in
Syria and sectarian tensions in Iraq to entrench itself in both
countries, now spanning the geographic center of the Middle East. Using
both terrorist and insurgent tactics, the group has seized and is
governing territory, while at the same time securing the allegiance of
allied terrorist groups across the Middle East and North Africa. ISIS's
sanctuary enables it to recruit, train, and execute external attacks,
as we have now seen in Europe, and to incite assailants around the
world. It has recruited thousands of militants to join its fight in the
region and uses its propaganda campaign to radicalize countless others
in the West. And at the same time, we continue to face an enduring
threat from al Qaida and its affiliates, who maintain the intent and
capacity to carry out attacks in the West.
In my remarks today, I will focus first on the nature of the
terrorist threat from transnational terrorist groups, focusing on ISIS
and al-Qaida. I then will address some of the key elements of the
strategy to degrade and defeat these groups, as well as the challenges
we face ahead.
The Spread of ISIS
Let me begin with the spread of ISIS from its roots in Iraq. ISIS
traces its origin to the veteran Sunni terrorist, Abu Mus'ab al-
Zarqawi, who founded the group in 2004 and pledged his allegiance to
bin Laden. Al Qaeda in Iraq, as it was then known, targeted U.S. forces
and civilians to pressure the United States and other countries to
leave Iraq and gained a reputation for brutality and tyranny.
In 2007, the group's continued targeting and repression of Sunni
civilians in Iraq caused a widespread backlash--often referred to as
the Sunni Awakening--against the group. This coincided with a surge in
U.S. and coalition forces and Iraq counterterrorism operations that
ultimately denied ISIS safe haven and led to a sharp decrease in its
attack tempo. Then in 2011, the group began to reconstitute itself amid
growing Sunni discontent and the civil war in Syria. In 2012, ISIS
conducted an average of 5-10 suicide attacks in Iraq per month, an
attack tempo that grew to 30-40 attacks per month in 2013.
While gaining strength in Iraq, ISIS exploited the conflict and
chaos in Syria to expand its operations across the border. The group
established the al-Nusrah Front as a cover for its activities in Syria,
and in April 2013, the group publicly declared its presence in Syria
under the ISIS name. Al-Nusrah leaders immediately rejected ISIS's
announcement and publicly pledged allegiance to al-Qaida. And by
February 2014, al-Qaida declared that ISIS was no longer a branch of
the group.
At the same time, ISIS accelerated its efforts to remove Iraqi and
Syrian government control of key portions of their respective
territories, seizing control of Raqqa, Syria, and Fallujah, Iraq, in
January 2014. The group marched from its safe haven in Syria, across
the border into northern Iraq, slaughtering thousands of Iraqi Muslims,
Sunni and Shia alike, on its way to seizing Mosul in June 2014. Through
these battlefield victories, the group gained weapons, equipment, and
territory, as well as an extensive war chest. In the summer of 2014,
ISIS declared the establishment of an Islamic caliphate under the name
the ``Islamic State'' and called for all Muslims to pledge support to
the group and its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Three overarching factors account for the rise and rapid success of
ISIS over the past three years.
First, ISIS has exploited the civil war in Syria and the lack of
security in northern Iraq to establish a safe haven. At the same time,
Assad's brutal suppression of the Syrian people acted as a magnet for
extremists and foreign fighters. In western Iraq, the withdrawal of
security forces during the initial military engagements with ISIS left
swaths of territory ungoverned. ISIS has used these areas to establish
sanctuaries in Syria and Iraq from where the group could amass and
coordinate fighters and resources with little interference. With
virtually no security forces along the Iraq-Syria border, ISIS was able
to move personnel and supplies with ease within its held territories.
Second, ISIS has proven to be an effective fighting force. Its
battlefield strategy employs a mix of terrorist operations, hit-and-run
tactics, and paramilitary assaults to enable the group's rapid gains.
These battlefield advances, in turn, sparked other Sunni insurgents
into action, and they have helped the group hold and administer
territory. Disaffected Sunnis have had few alternatives in Iraq or
Syria. The leadership in both countries has pushed them to the
sidelines in the political process for years, failing to address their
grievances. ISIS has been recruiting these young Sunnis to fight. Since
September 2014, the U.S.-led military coalition has halted ISIS's
momentum and reversed the group's territorial gains, but ISIS has
sought to adapt its tactics in the face of coalition air strikes.
Third, ISIS views itself as the new leader of the global jihad. The
group has developed an unprecedented ability to communicate with its
followers worldwide. It operates the most sophisticated propaganda
machine of any terrorist group. ISIS disseminates timely, high-quality
media content on multiple platforms, including on social media,
designed to secure a widespread following for the group. ISIS uses a
range of media to tout its military capabilities, executions of
captured soldiers, and battlefield victories.
ISIS's media campaign also is aimed at drawing foreign fighters to
the group, including many from Western countries. The media campaign
also allows ISIS to recruit new fighters to conduct independent or
inspired attacks in the West. ISIS's propaganda outlets include
multiple websites, active Twitter feeds, YouTube channels, and online
chat rooms. ISIS uses these platforms to radicalize and mobilize
potential operatives in the United States and elsewhere. The group's
supporters have sustained this momentum on social media by encouraging
attacks in the United States and against U.S. interests in retaliation
for our airstrikes. As a result, ISIS threatens to outpace al-Qaida as
the dominant voice of influence in the global extremist movement.
The Threat from ISIS Today
Today, ISIS reportedly has between 20,000 and 25,000 fighters in
Iraq and Syria, an overall decrease from the number of fighters in
2014. ISIS controls much of the Tigris-Euphrates basin. Significantly,
however, ISIS's frontlines in parts of northern and central Iraq and
northern Syria have been pushed back, according to the Defense
Department, and ISIS probably can no longer operate openly in
approximately 25 to 30 percent of populated areas in Iraq and Syria
that it dominated in August 2014.
ISIS also has branched out, taking advantage of the chaos and lack
of security in countries like Yemen to Libya to expand to new territory
and enlist new followers. ISIS can now claim formal alliances with
eight affiliated groups across an arc of instability and unrest
stretching from the Middle East across North Africa.
Libya is the most prominent example of the expansion of ISIS.
There, ISIS's forces include as many as 6,500 fighters, who have
captured the town of Sirte and 150miles of coastline over the past
year. This provides ISIS with a relatively safe base from which to
attract new recruits and execute attacks elsewhere, including on
Libya's oil facilities. In addition, ISIS has proven its ability to
conduct operations in western Libya, including a suicide bombing at a
police training, which killed at least 60 people earlier this year.
From this position, ISIS poses a multi-faceted threat to Europe and
to the United States. The strategic goal of ISIS remains to establish
an Islamic caliphate through armed conflict with governments it
considers apostate--including European nations and the United States.
In early 2014, ISIS's leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi warned that the
United States will soon ``be in direct conflict'' with the group. In
September 2014, the group's spokesperson Abu Muhammad al-Adnani
released a speech instructing supporters to kill disbelievers in
Western countries ``in any manner or way,'' without traveling to Syria
or waiting for direction.
ISIS has established an external operations organization under
Adnani's leadership. This unit reportedly is a distinct body inside
ISIS responsible for identifying recruits, supplying training and cash,
and arranging for the delivery of weapons. The unit's main focus has
been Europe, but it also has directed deadly attacks outside Europe,
including in Turkey, Egypt, Tunisia and Lebanon.
A recent New York Times report attributes 1,200 deaths to ISIS
outside Iraq and Syria, and about half of the dead have been local
civilians in Arab countries, many killed in attacks on mosques and
government offices. In the past two years ISIS reportedly has directed
or inspired more than 80 external attacks in as many as 20 nations. And
ISIS has carried out or inspired at least 29 deadly assaults targeting
Westerners around the world, killing more than 650 people.
Most concerning, the recent attacks in Brussels and Paris
demonstrate that ISIS now has both the intent and capability to direct
and execute sophisticated attacks in Western Europe. These attacks
reflect an alarming trend. Over the past year, ISIS has increased the
complexity, severity, and pace of its external attacks. The Brussels
and Paris attacks were not simply inspired by ISIS, but rather they
were ISIS-planned and directed. And they were conducted as part of a
coordinated effort to maximize casualties by striking some of the most
vulnerable targets in the West: a train station and airport in
Brussels, and a nightclub, cafe, and sporting arena in Paris. Further,
recent reports that ISIS has used chemical weapons in Syria, and that
it conducted surveillance of Belgium nuclear facilities, raise the
specter that the group is intent on using weapons of mass destruction.
In the United States, the threat from ISIS is on a smaller scale
but persistent. We have experienced attacks that ISIS has inspired--
including the attacks in San Bernardino and in Garland, Texas--and
there has been an overall uptick over the past year in the number of
moderate-to-small scale plots. Lone actors or insular groups--often
self-directed or inspired by overseas groups, like ISIS--pose the most
serious threat to carry out attacks here. Homegrown violent extremists
will likely continue gravitating to simpler plots that do not require
advanced skills, outside training, or communication with others. The
online environment serves a critical role in radicalizing and
mobilizing homegrown extremists towards violence. Highlighting the
challenge this presents, the FBI Director said last year that the FBI
has homegrown violent extremist cases, totaling about 900, in every
state. Most of these cases are connected to ISIS.
Several factors are driving this trend toward the increasing pace
and scale of terrorist-related violence. First, the sheer number of
number of Europeans and other Westerners who have gone to Syria to
fight in the conflict and to join ISIS is supplying a steady flow of
operatives to the group. Reports indicate that more than 6,000
Europeans--including many French, German, British, and Belgian
nationals--have travelled to Syria to join the fight. This is part of
the total of approximately 40,000 foreign fighters in the region. Among
the Europeans who have left for Syria, several hundred fighters have
returned to their home countries, typically battle-hardened, trained,
and further radicalized. The number of Americans who have travelled to
Syria or Iraq, or have tried to, exceeds 250.
As such, we should not underestimate the potential of an ISIS-
directed attack in the United States. While the principal threat from
ISIS in the United States is from homegrown, ISIS-inspired actors, the
fact that so many Americans have travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight,
along with thousands more from visa waiver countries in Europe, raises
the real concern that these individuals could be deployed here to
conduct attacks similar to the attacks in Paris and Brussels.
Second, ISIS has developed more advanced tactics in planning and
executing these attacks. In both Brussels and Paris, the operatives
staged coordinated attacks at multiple sites, effectively hampering
police responses. The militants exploited weaknesses in Europe's border
controls in order to move relatively freely from Syria to France and
Belgium. The group has also moved away from previous efforts to attack
symbolically significant targets--such as the 2014 attack on a Jewish
museum in Brussels--and appears to have adopted the guidance of a
senior ISIS operative in the group's online magazine, who directed
followers ``to stop looking for specific targets'' and to ``hit
everyone and everything.'' Further, the explosives used in Paris and
likely in Brussels indicate the terrorists have achieved a level of
proficiency in bomb making. The use of TATP in Paris and the discovery
of the material in raids in Brussels suggest that the operatives have
received sophisticated explosives training, possibly in Syria
Third, existing networks of extremists in Europe are providing the
infrastructure to support the execution of attacks there. The
investigations of the Paris and Belgium attacks have revealed embedded
radical networks that supply foreign fighters to ISIS in Syria and
operatives and logistical support for the terrorist attacks in those
cities. While such entrenched and isolated networks are not present in
the United States, ISIS continues to target Americans for recruitment,
including through the use of focused social media, in order to identify
and mobilize operatives here.
Looking more broadly, the rise of ISIS should be viewed as a
manifestation of the transformation of the global jihadist movement
over the past several years. We have seen this movement diversify and
expand in the aftermath of the upheaval and political chaos in the Arab
world since 2010. Instability and unrest in large parts of the Middle
East and North Africa have led to a lack of security, border control,
and effective governance. In the last few years, four states--Iraq,
Syria, Libya, and Yemen--have effectively collapsed. ISIS and other
terrorist groups exploit these conditions to expand their reach and
establish safe havens. As a result, the threat now comes from a
decentralized array of organizations and networks, with ISIS being the
group that presents the most urgent threat today.
Specifically, Al-Qaida core continues to support attacking the West
and is vying with ISIS to be the recognized leader of the global jihad.
There is no doubt that sustained
U.S. counterterrorism pressure has led to the steady elimination of
al-Qaida's senior leaders and limited the group's ability to operate,
train, and recruit operatives. At the same time, the core leadership of
al-Qaida continues to wield substantial influence over affiliated and
allied groups, such as Yemen-based al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.
On three occasions over the past several years, AQAP has sought to
bring down an airliner bound for the United States. And there is reason
to believe it still harbors the intent and substantial capability to
carry out such a plot.
In Syria, veteran al-Qaida fighters have traveled from Pakistan to
take advantage of the permissive operating environment and access to
foreign fighters. They are focused on plotting against the West. Al-
Shabaab also maintains a safe haven in Somalia and threatens U.S.
interests in the region, asserting the aim of creating a caliphate
across east Africa. The group has reportedly increased its recruitment
in Kenya and aims to destabilize parts of Kenya. Finally, AQIM (and its
splinter groups) and Boko Haram-- now an official branch of ISIS--
continue to maintain their base of operations in North and West Africa
and have demonstrated sustained capabilities to carry out deadly
attacks against civilian targets.
The Strategy To Defeat ISIS
Against this backdrop, I will briefly address the current strategy
to confront and ultimately defeat ISIS. As formidable as ISIS has
become, the group is vulnerable. Indeed, the U.S.-led military campaign
has killed thousands of ISIS fighters and rolled back ISIS's
territorial gains in parts of Iraq and Syria. ISIS has not had any
major strategic military victories in Iraq or Syria for almost a year.
As ISIS loses its hold on territory, its claim that it has established
the ``caliphate'' will be eroded, and the group will lose its central
appeal.
On the military front, a coalition of twelve nations has conducted
more than 8,700 airstrikes in Syria and Iraq, according to the Defense
Department. These strikes have taken out a range of targets, including
ISIS vehicles, weaponry, training camps, oil infrastructure, and
artillery positions. In addition, several nations have joined the
United States in deploying military personal to assist the Iraqi
government, training more than 17,000 Iraqi security forces.
The military effort also has included the successful targeting of
ISIS leaders. United States special operations forces have gone into
Syria to support the fight against ISIS, bringing a unique set of
capabilities, such as intelligence gathering, enabling local forces,
and targeting high-value ISIS operatives and leaders.
From a counterterrorism perspective, the United States is pursuing
multiple lines of effort. First, the United States is focusing on
stemming the flow of foreign fighters to Syria, and disrupting ISIS's
financial networks. The government reports that at least 50 countries
plus the United Nations now contribute foreign terrorist fighter
profiles to INTERPOL, and the United States has bilateral arrangements
with 40 international partners for sharing terrorist travel
information. In 2015, the U.S. government sanctioned more than 30 ISIS-
linked senior leaders, financiers, foreign terrorist facilitators, and
organizations, helping isolate ISIS from the international financial
system. In addition, since 2014, the FBI has arrested approximately 65
individuals in ISIS-related criminal matters.
Second, to counter ISIS propaganda, the United States is
strengthening its efforts to prevent ISIS from radicalizing and
mobilizing recruits. The White House recently announced the creation of
an interagency countering violent extremism (CVE) task force under the
leadership of the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of
Justice, with additional staffing from the FBI and National
Counterterrorism Center. The CVE task force is charged with the
integrating whole-of-government programs and activities and
establishing new CVE efforts. As part of this initiative, the DHS
Office for Community Partnerships is developing innovative ways to
support communities that seek to discourage violent extremism and to
undercut terrorist narratives.
Third, and more broadly, the United States continues to lead the
international diplomatic effort to resolve the underlying conflicts in
the region. This includes working toward a negotiated political
transition that removes Bashar al-Asad from power and ultimately leads
to an inclusive government that is responsive to the needs of all
Syrians. This effort also includes supporting the Iraqi government's
progress toward effective and inclusive governance, stabilization
efforts, and reconciliation.
To augment this strategy, there are a number of initiatives that
merit consideration.
One is a surge in our intelligence capabilities. Such a surge
should include enhancing our technical surveillance capabilities,
providing additional resources for the development of sources to
penetrate ISIS, and fostering closer relationships with intelligence
services in the region. This focus on intelligence collection would
help address the fact that our law enforcement and intelligence
agencies have found it increasingly difficult to collect specific
intelligence on terrorist intentions and plots. This intelligence gap
is due in part to the widespread availability and adoption of encrypted
communication technology. Indeed, ISIS has released a how-to manual to
its followers on the use of encryption to avoid detection. The gap also
is the result of the illegal disclosures of our intelligence collection
methods and techniques. These disclosures have provided terrorists with
a roadmap on how to evade our surveillance. Therefore, rebuilding our
intelligence capabilities should be an imperative.
Next, the United States should continue to work in concert with
European partners and support Europe's effort to break down barriers to
information sharing among agencies and among nations and to strengthen
border controls. Today, European nations do not always alert each other
when the encounter a terrorism suspect at a border. Europe should
incorporate the lessons we learned after 9/11 and adopt structural
changes that enable sharing of information between law enforcement and
intelligence agencies and that support watchlisting of suspected
terrorists.
Finally, the United States should redouble its efforts to counter
ISIS on the ideological front. This begins with a recognition that the
United States, along with nations in Europe, must build and maintain
trust and strong relationships with Muslim communities who are on the
front lines of the fight against radicalization. This also means we
must reject unambiguously the hateful rhetoric that erodes that trust.
The U.S. strategy should focus on empowering Muslim American
communities to confront extremist ideology, working to galvanize and
amplify networks of people, both in the government and private sector,
to confront ISIS's ideology of oppression and violence. While the
government has made strides in this direction, the pace and scale of
the effort has not matched the threat.
Conclusion
In the wake of the terrorist attacks in Europe and here in the
United States, our continued focus on ISIS and transnational terrorist
threats is absolutely warranted. We should not underestimate the
capacity of ISIS and other groups to adapt and evade our defenses and
to carry out acts of violence, both here at home and around the world.
But no terrorist group is invincible. The enduring lessons of 9/11
are that we can overcome and defeat the threat of terrorism through
strength, unity, and adherence to our founding values, and that
American leadership is indispensible to this fight.
I look forward to answering your questions.
The Chairman. Thank you.
I am going to reserve my time for interjections and turn to
our ranking member, Senator Cardin.
Senator Cardin. Well, Mr. Olsen, you may have started to
answer the question I was going to ask you, and that is you are
the former Director of the National Counterterrorism Center. So
I was curious as to whether there are lessons that we have
learned, that you learned in fighting Al Qaeda and other
terrorist groups that apply to ISIL, recognizing ISIL is unique
in its caliphate and what it is attempting to do. But your
final comment I thought was striking in that if we have unity
and resolve and leadership, we can defeat ISIL. Were there
other lessons learned in what we did successfully in dealing
with Al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations that we can now
use for ISIL?
Mr. Olsen. I think there certainly are lessons. You know,
at a very strategic level, obviously unity and leadership and
resolve are crucial. But more tactically, we learned a lot over
the last 15 years since 9/11.
One is the hardest lessons perhaps to actually achieve is
to deny these groups safe haven. That is one of the keys. We
learned that in Afghanistan and we have learned it in terms of
our efforts to mount sustained pressure on Al Qaeda wherever it
exists. We see that now with what has happened with ISIS in
Iraq and Syria. Wherever these groups gain a foothold, wherever
they have the opportunity, a sanctuary to plot and train,
inevitably they turn to carry out external attacks. So limiting
and eventually destroying a safe haven is crucial.
Another point to make is the importance of information
sharing, and this goes directly to the lessons that we learned
since 9/11 and what we need now to work with our European
partners to instill. That is the importance of sharing
information across the intelligence and law enforcement divide.
We certainly learned that after 9/11, breaking down barriers to
that type of sharing and also vertically in the United States
from the Federal to the State level--and you see that as well
in Europe--to instill an incentive, really the imperative to
share information at all levels.
I think those are some of the enduring lessons from 9/11.
Senator Cardin. That is very helpful.
You mentioned that there are six other countries in which
ISIL has strength. Our staff, I think, has identified 20
countries where there are groups that show support for ISIL.
You indicate that we cannot have any safe havens.
Other than Iraq and Syria, what country would you next put
as our greatest area of concern that a safe haven could be
developing?
Mr. Olsen. I think you would find that there is a consensus
here among us that Libya is the next most concerning nation. In
Libya, ISIS has as many as 6,500 fighters. They control the
coastal town of Sirte and about 150 miles of coastline. They
have demonstrated a capability to carry out attacks as far as
in western Libya. They carried out one of the most deadly
suicide bombings in western Libya, killing 60 people at a
police station. And then you consider sort of the geographic
location of Libya to Europe. So I think if I picked out the
next most concerning country, it would clearly be Libya.
Senator Cardin. And of course, the formula there is similar
to what we see in Syria. We have conflicting political entities
leaving a vacuum that ISIL can certainly go into. So thank you
for that.
Dr. Levitt, I want to say something at least optimistic
here for a moment, if I might, because I agree with your
analysis on the causes for radicalization. There was an article
in the ``Washington Post'' today by Joby Warrick that says that
recent pollings show that we have increased from 60 to 80
percent of the young Arabs who disavow the extremist tactics
being used and disavow the organization totally, even if it did
not use terrorist tactics, saying, the survey suggests, that
religious fervor plays a secondary role at best when young
Arabs do decide to sign up with the Islamic State. Joblessness
or poor economic prospects appear to be the top reason. It sort
of reinforces the point that you made that we really need to
deal with some of these underlying problems.
How do you deal with that? Clearly, poverty exists. It
exists throughout the region. So the economic issues are always
going to be there. What strategies can work in Iraq and Syria
to really deal with the radicalization of the population?
Dr. Levitt. Thank you very much for the question.
Ultimately what we are talking about is good governance.
Most studies actually show that poverty is not what is driving
terrorism, but poverty plays an important role in the mix of
things all together. And what we are talking about is good
governance, not necessarily at the federal level but at the
local level. People need to be able to go about their daily
lives and achieve what they need to achieve as basic human
beings. And when they cannot, it creates a cognitive opening
for sometimes dangerous ideas, not always dangerous, but for
ideas that will help them understand what is happening to them.
And sometimes these very radical ideas are the ones that have
the greatest resonance, especially when things are really
tough.
If I may, I would like to add one comment on the Libya
question, and that is when I was just in Europe--and I am going
back several more times over the next few weeks--the Europeans
stressed to me that they are very concerned about Libya in part
also because of the foreign terrorist fighter issue. They are
beginning to make it more difficult for people to travel to
Iraq and Syria. People are still going. But as they make it
more complicated, they are seeing people, Europeans, travel to
Libya, and that is a concern.
And let us be clear. It is not Islamic State in Libya.
There are at least three distinct Islamic States, Islamic State
provinces, and they are not exactly the same in Libya.
And on the issue of what we can learn, I have to say that
we have often for years now talked about whole of government.
But only recently--and I give credit to the administration--
have we created a task force at DHS with a deputy from DOJ and
interagency buy-in, something that Matt was working on a lot
when he was there. And he can speak to this in spades about the
importance of getting greater buy-in from other parts of the
interagency.
Now we have a task force that was created top down by the
President, and we really need to get in not only the FBI and
NCTC side of government but the HHS and Education and other
parts of government as well.
Senator Cardin. Let me get one more question to you, Dr.
Levitt. You said one of the reasons why recruitment was
effective is that young believers want to get in in the
beginning state of a new state, the caliphate. So how important
is it, the territorial dimensions of ISIL, in its recruitment?
Dr. Levitt. I think the territorial piece for ISIL
recruitment is huge, and I think nothing has had a bigger
impact on setting them back, including setting back their
recruitment campaigns than battlefield defeat. They cannot
claim to be establishing this idyllic caliphate that they have
tried to create online. They cannot say that they are remaining
and expanding, which is their own words, their own litmus test
metric for success. And if there is not an idyllic caliphate to
get in and build from the ground level up and if that caliphate
is exposed for not really being much of a caliphate, certainly
not being like what was created with the Prophet Muhammad and
his original followers, then this line of reasoning does not
resonate as much as it might otherwise.
Senator Cardin. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Senator Johnson?
Senator Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
In January 2016, through excellent police work, the FBI
foiled a plot in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It was a plot against
the Masonic Temple. The would-be terrorist's name was Samy
Mohamed Hamzeh. In the complaint there is an informant that
quoted him a number of times. I just want to read you excerpts
from that complaint.
This is Samy Mohamed Hamzeh. I quote. ``I am telling you if
this hit is executed, it will be known all over the world. The
people will be scared and the operations will increase. This
way we will be igniting it. I mean, we are marching at the
front of the war, and we will eliminate everyone.
Mr. Wood, you encapsulated in your article what ISIS really
wants--the significance, as Dr. Levitt was talking about, of
that territory, of that caliphate. We understand how incredibly
effective ISIS is at using social media to inspire people like
Samy Mohamed Hamzeh. I want to ask all the panelists, do you
think ISIS can be contained if it has that caliphate, if that
territory exists? Is there any way you can contain ISIS's
ability to incite that type of activity? Mr. Wood, I will start
with you.
Mr. Wood. I would first echo something that Dr. Levitt
said. This slogan of remaining and expanding was ubiquitous in
ISIS propaganda a year ago. There is a reason that is not
mentioned quite as much nowadays, namely that it is being
falsified. It is not expanding.
Now, the ability actually to contain it and to suffer no
attacks to be safe outside of its borders, to make sure that no
planning takes place within the caliphate to attack us outside
of it--that will never be possible. There will constantly be an
effort to do that and especially as the caliphate ceases to be
an expanding caliphate. It is so important for them to dominate
the news cycle, to be able to present themselves as the A list
of global jihad that I would expect them to continue and to
expand their foreign attacks. So in that sense, I do not think
it is possible to contain the group.
Now, is it possible to contain them within certain limits,
though? That is, can we contain them and limit their ability to
attack us outside of their territory to a tolerable amount?
Now, what we consider tolerable when we consider attacks on the
homeland is perhaps up for debate. I think that we can keep
them to a level that we might have to consider manageable,
which would be the level that we have for the last few years.
Senator Johnson. Let me quickly interject. These numbers--
by the way, I understand they are very imperfect, but this is
from the State Department's START report, the study of
terrorism and response to terrorism, showing that prior to 9-
11-2001, on average there are less than 5,000 deaths due to
terrorist attack. In 2012, that grew to 15,000. In 2014, it was
up to 32,700.
So, as far as a ``tolerable level of terrorism,'' I am not
sure there is such a thing. My sense is that the problem is
actually growing.
Mr. Olsen, you certainly talked about the fact that they
have gained strong footholds and they have to be destroyed.
Correct? Do you really think we can try to contain the ISIS
caliphate and not have their message spread and grow? I would
imagine you have seen the videos of them training the next
generation. Every day that goes by, they are training more
young people. They are starting to stream in using the migrant
flow into Europe. This is a growing threat. Is it not?
Mr. Olsen. I do think it is growing in the sense that as
the numbers have increased, particularly the problem is a
threat to the West, the problem of foreign fighters streaming
into Syria and Iraq, 40,000 total foreign fighters from around
the world, over 6,000 Europeans. You know, that is a real
threat. And that was something we saw when I was in government
2 years ago. We are now seeing the sort of fruits of that
movement with the attacks in Brussels and France as individuals
return from having traveled to Syria. I think from that
perspective it is a growing problem.
And I think I would also add a point to agree with Graeme
Wood that even as we constrain and have success in limiting
ISIS on the battlefield in Syria and Iraq, you may actually see
more of the types of attacks like we see in Brussels and Paris.
In other words, those are very hard to stop, and ISIS, in an
effort to remain relevant, to dominate the news cycle, as Mr.
Wood said, may actually increase its effort to carry out those
type of attacks.
Senator Johnson. You talked about the need to surge our
intelligence capabilities. We have not been capturing and
detaining ISIS operatives and then interviewing them over long
periods of time. When I was down in Guantanamo Bay, I talked to
those interviewers. That is how you actually gain that human
intelligence, by capturing these operatives and then talking to
them over a long period of time--poking holes in their
testimony to find the discrepancies with testimony of fellow
operatives.
How harmful is the fact that we really have reduced to
almost the point of eliminating our capturing, detaining, and
long-term interviewing of terrorist operatives?
Mr. Olsen. We have had some success in terms of doing
exactly that, detaining and interrogating ISIS members in Iraq.
So there has been some----
Senator Johnson. We were able to foil some potentially
chemical attacks. Correct?
Mr. Olsen. Exactly, Senator. So there has been some
success. It has not occurred certainly on the scale that we
saw, for example, in Afghanistan in Bagram. It is an important
part of any effort.
Senator Johnson. Dr. Levitt, would you like to comment on
my questions?
Dr. Levitt. Just on the first one, I would say that we need
to recognize there is a big piece of glory in this for
wannabes. And what you read from the case in Milwaukee is not
unique. Consider the case of just after the November attacks in
Paris. Belgian police intercepted a phone call to Brussels from
a Syrian and overheard a Belgian militant inquiring about his
friend Bilal Hadfi who had been one of the suicide bombers in
Paris. The militant asks what his friends were saying about
Bilal back in, quote, the sector, meaning Molenbeek. The quote.
He asked, are they talking about him? Are they praising him?
Are they saying he was a lion? In other words, his main issue
is the personal glory about all of this and this inspiring
piece of it.
I do think that as we have greater success, we should
expect that our adversary is going to lash out where and when
it can. It wants to show relevance, and it does want to get on
the news. That does not mean we should not try and succeed. It
means we should anticipate that those things will happen.
Because the Islamic State controls territory and because
there is nothing really good to go in behind the Islamic State,
maybe not in Iraq, certainly not in Syria, it is not just so
easy as how quickly can we defeat them. It is how quickly can
we defeat them and have something else that will take that
space and not do the same all over again. And that makes this
much more difficult.
Senator Johnson. Listen, I understand the challenge, but
the bottom line is as long as that caliphate exists, as long as
they control territory, from my standpoint the risk is going to
continue to grow.
Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Senator Menendez?
Senator Menendez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you all for your testimony. I was catching it in the
midst of meetings in my office.
I listened to your testimony here, and I had the privilege
before in your official role, Mr. Olsen, and Dr. Levitt,
gracious enough to come by my office and talk about this
subject.
I get the sense that we are in this for a very long time.
Is that a pessimistic view or is it a realistic view?
Mr. Olsen. I certainly think it is a realistic view. How
long that is is hard to gauge, but it certainly is a matter of
years I would say at this point.
Senator Menendez. Do you agree with that, Dr. Levitt?
Dr. Levitt. I agree with it by default. As we just
discussed, this is a clear and immediate threat, but there also
is the problem of not knowing what is going to come in behind
it in the near term.
I can tell you, though, as I go around and I talk to
counterterrorism officials and officials in the military, they
are frustrated because there is not a whole lot of direction. I
get asked all the time by people in government now as someone
out of government what is our strategy and what is our goal.
Tell me and I will get us there. If they do not know what it
is, that means it is not being communicated well enough from
the top, and we need to do that. I think, therefore, we are in
this for the long haul by default. There has to be a way to
have a real strategy to defeat the Islamic State and plan for
what can come in behind it without this necessarily being
multi-generational.
Senator Menendez. So your testimony, Mr. Olsen, was that
this is a real threat to the United States, one that--I do not
want to say that the President downplayed it in his most recent
interview, but he characterized it a little different than the
sense I get of the Islamic State. And I understand wanting to
continue on with our lives so that terrorists do not ultimately
win. But I listened to it and I get concerned about the ability
of the Islamic State to have command and control centers that,
at the end of the day, allow them to go far beyond all the
different places in which they are presently located.
So if those, as you say, Dr. Levitt, that are in charge of
defending the United States feel that there is no specific
strategy to achieve the goal, what are some of the immediate
things that we need to do certainly to not allow the Islamic
State to have the capacity for command and control to direct
attacks against the United States, one, and our allies?
And two, there is obviously a longer-term effort here
because if Mr. Wood's statements about the depth of ISIL's
support is the reality, we have a challenge to deal with that
that is on a longer scale to defeat the ideology and to work on
its role in the mediums that we have.
What are some of the things we should be doing immediately
as a strategy to at least disrupt their command and control
elements? And secondly, what must we commit ourselves to in
order to work against their ideology? And that has a series of
elements, I would assume, in addition to raising the standard
of people's lives in these countries who obviously feel that
they have no real hope for the future and that they are
desperate economically and then they turn to a place where they
in fact have their challenges converted into the belief that
dying is more glorifying than living and that there is a better
life beyond by virtue of martyrdom.
So can you deal with what we should be doing in the short
term that we are not to disrupt command and control and their
ability to have attacks against the United States and our
allies? And what is the longer-range challenge that we have
here? I would invite anyone to answer.
Mr. Olsen. I will jump in on that because it is obviously a
very large and well-framed question because what you have put
out, Senator, is there are things that we can do immediately
and in the short term that we are doing at a tactical level to
disrupt their command and control. One is maintaining the
military pressure, accelerating that effort in Syria and Iraq
to help put pressure on their ability to plan and plot with
impunity in a sanctuary they have created. That includes the
use of special forces to go after their leaders and high-value
operatives.
We also, as I mentioned, need to increase our intelligence
capabilities. We have lost a lot of our intelligence
capabilities because essentially the game plan was given away
to how we collect intelligence. And that needs to be rebuilt.
So we need to improve our intelligence.
And then we need to, again in the shorter term, work with
our European partners to improve their ability to share the
information, often information that we collect and then share
with Europe. That needs to get shared more effectively within
Europe. That is the shorter term.
Longer term, in answer to your question, there is the issue
of the ideology, and that is where this becomes not just a
short-term problem but a very long-term problem as we go after
addressing and countering the ideology that fuels the violence.
That is a difficult effort. It is hard to measure success, but
it is one that I think we need to step up our efforts in order
to match the nature of the threat.
And then finally, the point I would make--and you touched
on this. We need to address the underlying and root causes of
extremism and terrorism, whether it is civil unrest, lack of
border controls, lack of socioeconomic opportunity in large
parts of the Middle East and North Africa.
Senator Menendez. Dr. Levitt?
Dr. Levitt. Thank you for the question. You hit the nail on
the head on the biggest problem we are facing right now.
In the immediate, the first thing that had to happen and
did happen was a change in the rules of engagement. And so we
have seen the ability to now target oil. We have seen the
ability to target where they are storing their cash, the oil
tanker trucks. We are seeing a significant change since
December in the battlefield approach.
We are also seeing clearly the need to not only improve our
ability to collect, as you heard, but also not only our ability
to share but the ability of our partners to receive and share.
And the Europeans have a real problem here. I will just give
you one example.
Europol's focal point traveler database has recorded only
2,786 verified foreign terrorist fighters despite the fact that
we know that it is well upwards of 5,000, probably closer to
6,000 EU citizens or residents of the EU who travel to Syria
and Iraq and more recently Libya to fight. But what is worse is
that of those 2,786 verified cases, over 90 percent of those
reports come from only five EU countries.
It used to be a point, when I was at the desk for intel at
Treasury, that we would be asking the Europeans to partner with
us more on the Terror Finance Tracking Program. If you look at
the European Union counterterrorism coordinator's latest
report, it is not us. It is him. He is calling on European
member states to remove certain cutouts. For example, if you
make a euro denominated payment from one person within the EU
to someone else within the EU, that is not covered within the
program. America is not asking for that change. The EU
counterterrorism coordinator is asking for that change. There
are lots of things that have to change there.
But in the long term, absolutely right. The military fight
is difficult because they control territory. The ideology is
something we are going to be dealing with for a very long time.
And I think it is two distinct things here.
One is in the region. You have a lost generation in the
extreme. Young children today, hostage today within areas under
Islamic State control, are brought up to be completely
desensitized to violence. People in camps elsewhere in the
Middle East do not have a regular roof over their heads, do not
have regular access to education. That is going to be a
generational challenge.
And then more generally, given social media and the ability
to share ideas very widely, we have seen how these dangerous
ideas can cross borders that do not exist on the Internet and
their ability to resonate with people who are facing completely
different issues in, say, Molenbeek in Brussels or elsewhere.
And the fact that those ideas from the Middle East are
resonating with people from Molenbeek who are third or fourth
generation Belgian citizens--one of them said to me we feel
more Belgian than most Belgians because most Belgians who have
been here for hundreds of years think they are Walloon or
Flemish. We just know Belgium. That this is what is resonating
with them is a real issue we will be dealing with for a long
time.
Senator Menendez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you.
As my first interjection, I hear sometimes from the foreign
policy establishment, if you will, that the only thing we need
to do here is develop a strategy like we did for the Soviet
Union during the nuclear standoff. This strategy would go from
President to President and from Congress to Congress.. And I
listen to these issues. We see the issues when we travel to the
Middle East. I look at the challenges we face right now in the
Middle East and compare them to the bipolar nuclear struggle
with the Soviet Union and I see the Soviet Union issue as
almost being Ned in the First Reader. I mean, it was very
simple relative to the issues that we have today. So I
sometimes become upset when I hear people say, well, you guys
just need to develop a policy like we developed for the Soviet
Union that can go from generation to generation, from decade to
decade.
For instance, someone might say we need to go after an ISIS
safe haven, but we have to wait until someone is there to come
behind it. We also have the poverty issues. You know, Egypt has
90 million people and 2.5 million are born each year.700,000
new jobs need to be created each year just to take care of
that. They have terrorism and have seen a downturn in tourism.
They have a health care system that does not work. Each of the
countries has similar problems, some worse than others.
Sometimes we have a leader that we can deal with and sometimes
we have a terrible leader that we cannot deal with.
So if I were going to ask you to step back and lay out the
components of a strategy to deal with ISIS that could go from
administration to administration and from Congress to Congress,
what would the elements of that be?
Mr. Olsen. If I can begin, Chairman, by agreeing with your
observation about the complexity of the current challenge
compared to perhaps the Cold War. And while I do think the
current challenge is more complex, obviously, I think it is
important to point out we do not face the sort of existential
threat that we did during the Cold War. And I think those are
ways to think about this.
The Chairman. Well, in some ways it makes it more
difficult.
Mr. Olsen. That is right.
The Chairman. Because the American people today, while they
are fearful, do not feel an existential threat. There are
tremendous investments that we need to make here, but when you
look at the Middle East issue, you are talking about
investments, are you not? I mean, you are talking about poverty
and lots of other things. So, I am sorry to interject again--
but go ahead and lay out the strategy that is going to carry us
decade to decade.
Mr. Olsen. Well, very broadly I would think of it in three
ways. One is the denial of a safe haven to ISIS and other
groups, and that means a military commitment with the Iraqis
and in Syria. It means working with governments, coalition
partners to build an ability to hold territory on the ground.
So one big bucket of effort has to be denying safe haven, and
that is, at least with respect to ISIS, a significant military
effort.
The second bucket I think is defeating the infrastructure,
going after the terrorist infrastructure. That means the
movement of people, money, arms, and ideas. So going after
ISIS--its infrastructure, which includes all of those things,
people, money, weapons, and ideas, its ability to carry out its
propaganda campaign.
And then the third large category is hardening our own
defenses. That is intelligence sharing. It is homeland
security. It is working with our allies to build up our ability
to disrupt attacks, to stop the movement of people, to
prosecute individuals who commit crimes by seeking to provide
material support to terrorism, for example.
So very broadly speaking, those three categories. The only
thing I left out was in that third category I would add in the
countering violent extremism effort that Dr. Levitt talked
about as well.
The Chairman. So none of that addressed the underlying
issues that are driving the whole desire of young people to be
a part of this right? I mean, you are admitting that.
Mr. Olsen. You are right. It is absolutely a fair point,
Chairman. You know, in some ways that is such a broad effort.
It is an essential part of the effort. So, yes, I should have
mentioned that, but that is obviously a very difficult and
broad effort to address. I mentioned earlier the underlying and
root causes of terrorism. Those are political, socioeconomic,
educational.
The Chairman. Do you want to add to that, or can we move to
the next question?
Dr. Levitt. If I may just in brief because almost all my
points just checked off. I just checked them off. But I would
add local governance. Local governance, whether it is in Iraq
or it is in Brussels. If we can work with allies, target our
dollars, create conditions where local governance is put in
place, it goes the longest way for people being able to live
their lives.
And the second thing is the one thing none of us have
mentioned today--and mea culpa. I have not either--is Syria. We
are not just dealing with the Islamic State. We are dealing
with Syria. And I happen to believe that Assad is at least a
big a problem as the Islamic State is. According to the U.N.,
there is a 9 to 1 ratio, the number of people the Assad regime
has killed compared to the Islamic State. And the Islamic State
is only here today because of the vacuum that was created by
Assad. And I think that we bear some responsibility for that.
We were not proactive enough. We did not do what we could have
when we could have, and Syria much, much worse. There are
mistakes of omission that were created, and I would say looking
forward across administrations, we need to be careful not only
to be wary of what we do, but of what we do not do.
The Chairman. Mr. Wood, do you want to add to that?
Mr. Wood. Yes. I would echo both comments already. I would
add one more thing, which is a key portion of ISIS's strategy
right now is regional instability, that is, in the Middle East,
countries like Saudi Arabia, like Egypt particularly in the
Sinai. And we need to keep a very close eye on these aspects.
Specifically ISIS has taken the tactic of having a series of
terrorist attacks in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, in Egypt and
has attempted to demonstrate that the ability to maintain
stability, to stave off chaos that is really the main value
proposition of these governments for their people is no longer
something that they can promise. These are local dynamics that
need to be addressed as a key portion of an anti-ISIL strategy.
The Chairman. Well, if I could, to summarize in terms of
the denial of a safe haven--you are talking about a whole
different kind of effort than has been taking place. I mean, I
think people acknowledge that. It is not a plus or minus--I am
just saying you are talking about a whole different kind of
effort.
In regards to the infrastructure piece, I do think that
there are some efforts underway to deal with the nine different
efforts, if you will, that are necessary there.
In terms of hardening defenses, obviously, that's a no-
brainer.
But the fact is that when you start dealing with the local
issues, now you are starting to deal with the core of the
problem. And I just want to say again you are talking about a
massive, long-term problem. You said years--I think years is a
tremendous understatement. And I think that the resources and
the efforts dealing with rulers that candidly sometimes are
good, sometimes are bad, changes overnight sometimes. It is a
pretty daunting task that we have to figure out a way to deal
with.
But again, to try to cause something to occur between a
Democratic administration or a Republican administration, with
different parties in control in Congress, you are talking about
something that deserves our effort but is very daunting,
especially with players changing as rapidly as they do.
With that, Senator Gardner.
Senator Gardner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Wood, it is good to see you again. Thanks for coming to
Colorado for the counterterrorism education learning laboratory
event a couple months ago. So I really appreciate your presence
there. Thank you.
To the other witnesses as well, thank you all for your
participation today.
I wanted to follow up on the conversation you had a little
bit with Libya a couple of minutes ago. To Senator Cardin, I
may ask him if I am accurately phrasing this question. Several
on the committee had an opportunity to visit with leadership in
Saudi Arabia. When the question of Libya was asked, I believe
the response from one of the key leaders, top leaders in Saudi
Arabia was that they believe Libya will make Syria look like--
and I quote--a piece of cake. And I just was wondering if you
would agree with that assessment or not, and if you agree, are
we adequately focusing our resources, attention, and planning
on Libya?
Mr. Olsen. That is, obviously, a quite pessimistic
perspective.
You know, there is an effort underway to reconstitute the
political leadership in Libya. That, to our conversation just a
few minutes ago with the chairman, is critical to addressing
the longer-term problem in Libya, the governance issues, the
lack of security. My sense is the last few years have been
extremely difficult in Libya, and the rise of extremist
groups--and in particular, ISIS does pose a significant threat
I think second only to the threat that ISIS poses from its safe
haven in Syria and Iraq. I think what we are going to need to
do is be able to look toward in the near term targeted efforts
in Libya to go after ISIS leaders, particularly when we have
intelligence about threats emanating from its stronghold in
Sirte, but also over the longer term working with whatever sort
of political regime emerges from the process there.
Senator Gardner. Dr. Levitt?
Dr. Levitt. Yes, I would just concur and say I think the
main difference--and it may be optimistic to put it this way--
is that there are people who are positive about the prospects
of there being something else to come in behind what was in
Libya as a central government. And if there can be some type of
central government, that it then could be the backbone, with
international support, to take on the three distinct Islamic
State elements around the country. I am not a Libya expert. I
cannot tell you whether or not that is accurate or not, but
that makes it very, very different than Syria where there is no
prospect for that at all.
Senator Gardner. Mr. Wood?
Mr. Wood. One thing I would add is in some of my reporting
in Nigeria, Libya has been mentioned frequently actually as a
kind of hub of control, an ideological hub, a place where
fighters for Boko Haram could do go for a kind of ideological
training or indoctrination. So I think one of the important
elements that we need to understand about the danger of the
developing situation there is the connection of Libya to the
so-called West African province of ISIS and the larger problem
of the Maghreb, which the connections are still poorly tracked.
Senator Gardner. Thank you.
Turning to the western hemisphere now, in the 2016
Worldwide Threat Assessment, the Director of National
Intelligence stated that more than 36,500 foreign fighters--we
know these numbers--including at least 6,600 from Western
countries, have traveled to Syria from more than 100 countries
since the conflict began. Director Comey at the FBI has said a
total of over 250 Americans have traveled or attempted to
travel to Syria as of September 2015, 150 being successful. We
have learned also from private sources that an additional 76
fighters traveled from South America. And according to reports
that we have all seen, on March 9 the man who identified
himself as an ISIS follower, murdered a well known Jewish
merchant in Uruguay.
Do any of you see ISIS or other Islamic terrorist networks
growing in presence in our own hemisphere? Mr. Wood?
Mr. Wood. Up till now, the ISIS supporters whose individual
cases I have looked at have been clearly directing their
efforts toward getting to Syria or have already got there. That
certainly does not mean that there are not cells in the United
States, that there is not development of plans. I would be
shocked if that is not happening. But the specific traces of it
are not things that have been on my radar.
Senator Gardner. And I guess I recognize--and we have all
talked about the United States and possibilities of targeting
the United States and the cells and the radicalization. But
what about South America? What about Central America, Mexico?
What are we seeing? What do you see?
Mr. Wood. Again, I have seen individual cases of Peruvians
or Chileans who have made it to ISIS territory. And they are
fascinating examples of a kind of current case of
globalization. A Peruvian who decides that Syria is his
destiny. But the actual development of attacks and cells I have
not observed.
Senator Gardner. Dr. Levitt?
Dr. Levitt. It has been actually impressive how small the
numbers have been so far from South America, South and Central
America. I am told there are a couple of places where I do not
know if you would call them hotspots yet because it is still
small numbers, but more than onesies and twosies. But my
understanding is people are watching this very, very closely
and not just local authorities but, obviously, American
authorities too for obvious reasons. So I do not want to make
it sound like we are not interested, we are not concerned, but
it is telling that the numbers have been as small as they have
been. And I have heard of no kind of networks or cells and such
that we could describe that we know about. Of course, you do
not know what you do not know, but the numbers have been very
small.
Senator Gardner. Mr. Olsen, I want to follow up with you
with something you said earlier. I think in November I had the
opportunity to travel to Mexico to visit with the foreign
minister in Mexico City, to visit with some of their defense
experts. And we talked a lot about this very question and what
was happening in Mexico and their neighbors to the south, and
the danger that they recognize somebody coming either back to
Mexico or Central America who traveled to Syria and then came
back or perhaps somebody who is trying to get in through Mexico
and our southern border. They understand the concern and they
understand the need and the need to cooperate with the United
States and the western hemisphere.
You talked about how ISIS has created this sort of external
operations command. I am sorry. This was Dr. Levitt. Not you. I
am sorry, Mr. Olsen. Dr. Levitt, you said this, that
information sharing within the European Union does not reflect
their threat. I believe that was you who said that. Do we have
the kind of information and communication network that we need
in the western hemisphere to deal with a possibility of a
threat in the future?
Dr. Levitt. Matt is much more capable to speak to this than
I am because he helped build it, but I do not mind tooting his
horn.
Nothing is perfect. But we have since 9/11 done what the
Europeans have not done with joint terrorist task forces and
infusion centers and very close and intimate outreach to our
neighbors and people who do not just border on our country to
build the kind of network that shares information up and down
pipelines and avoids stovepiping. You will never have complete
elimination of stovepiping, but this is something that we have
invested a tremendous amount of time and effort and money,
frankly, into building. And you do have much, much different
sharing between local, State, even things like tribal and
Federal authorities in this country and our outreach with DHS
and other offices abroad than most of our partners do.
I have some very good friends who head our DHS offices in
places abroad, and one of the things they do is try and build
that relationship not only for our benefit but help build
similar type of connective tissue within our allies' countries.
That is to their benefit, and by extension to ours.
Senator Gardner. Thank you.
And Mr. Olsen or Mr. Wood, if you would like to add to
that. Otherwise I have run out of time.
Mr. Olsen. I would just very much agree with Dr. Levitt in
terms of the efforts in the United States in terms of both
changing laws, changing policies, and the level of resources
put into the overall enterprise of sharing intelligence,
sharing law enforcement information, both horizontally among
Federal agencies but also vertically between Federal and State
and local agencies.
Senator Gardner. Mr. Chairman, thanks.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Senator Shaheen?
Senator Shaheen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you all very much for being here.
I want to follow up on the information sharing, but before
I do, I want to just pick up on the line of discussion that
Senator Corker raised because it struck me, Mr. Olsen, as you
were talking about what is in a strategy to fight ISIS, that
there were military components of virtually everything you
suggested. And yet, as we have talked about how do we get to
the core of this problem, it is governance, it is economic and
social concerns. And we have been much more successful in
America when we have been dealing with the military aspects
than we have been with nation building. And so it seems to me
this is going to continue to be an impediment, as we think
about how to deal with this, to actually get at the root
causes.
And also, it is going to be harder to get public support to
deal with the economic, social, governance concerns, the nation
building aspects of what we need to do than it is to get
support for the military concerns. So it kind of puts us in a
Catch 22 situation in terms of how to get at the fundamental
issues that you are raising about ISIS. I do not know that I
need anybody to respond to that unless someone would like to
and you think there is a hole in my reasoning there.
Mr. Olsen. If I could just say almost as a point of
clarification, first of all, I agree with you wholeheartedly,
Senator. In my response I think back to Chairman Corker's
point, I had in mind sort of the strategy with regard to ISIS
in terms of my focus on the military effort to deny safe haven.
But when you look at other countries, obviously the denial of
safe haven to terrorist groups, whether it is ISIS, Al Qaeda,
or affiliated groups, that really is a political, social,
diplomatic effort.
So when you look at countries across North Africa from the
west in Nigeria through Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, into the Middle
East, places like Yemen, each of these places we have to engage
to build up the capacity of those countries to support
political transitions that are appropriate for the countries,
that would create allies for us. That is a much harder, as you
pointed out in your question, and longer-term effort, but one
that is certainly at least as indispensable as any military
effort, which just happens to be where we find ourselves with
respect to ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
Senator Shaheen. So let me follow up on the question about
information sharing because one of the points you made, Mr.
Olsen--and I think both of the others of you have made it as
well--is that one of the challenges in Europe is the
information sharing and getting up to speed today in Europe to
where we were back after September 11.
So what are the impediments to doing that and what more
should we be doing in the United States to support the European
efforts? For whoever would like to answer that.
Dr. Levitt. Thank you for both your questions.
If I could just quickly tag onto the first one, I do not
think we should be doing the nation building thing. We do not
do it well. You are absolutely right. But we need to spend a
lot more time and effort with our diplomacy to convince
governments, allies, that it is not just as a favor to us but
it is in their interests to put in place good governance. That
is very, very hard for some countries where me remaining in
power as an individual is more important than anything else,
but that is to be a huge priority in a way that it is not yet.
With our European allies, there are several legitimate
issues. They have a different sense of privacy than we do. I do
not minimize it, or make light of it at all. But it all comes
down to balance. People have a right to privacy. People have a
right to get on the metro going to work in downtown Brussels
and not be blown up. And staging at each metro stop soldiers in
camo with automatic weapons across their chests, as they did--I
was at that metro stop six times the week before--is not going
to stop someone from getting on with a suicide bomb.
The other thing is they have concerns from World War II and
elsewhere of a history of the overstep of intelligence. So,
again, what kind of assurances and checks and balances do you
need to put in place to make people feel comfortable?
And finally, the European Union is more European than a
union in many ways. It is primarily an economic union, and in
that it has been very successful. But the very things that make
it a successful economic union create vulnerabilities from a
security standpoint, and there is not as much of an interest,
because of privacy issues and tensions between some governments
and because of business issues, legitimate economic issues, to
put things in place.
So I think this will be, I believe, a wakeup call, at least
for some. The fact that Turkey had informed not just the
Netherlands but Belgium as well of one of the people who was
later an attacker and this information was not shared. The fact
that there is the SS system at the borders, but it turns out
that a whole host of EU countries are not connected to it or do
not input any information into it. I think we are going to see
some changes there.
Senator Shaheen. You have described the problem very well.
It is still not clear to me exactly what we need to do.
But I want to go on to another question because one of the
things that we are currently doing in the State Department is
setting up a new global engagement center to counter violent
extremism. And I was in Brussels for the Brussels Forum and
heard a variety of experts talking about countering violent
extremism and what we need to do to address ISIL. And they
were, I think, pretty united in suggesting that that was a
wasted effort, that what we need to do is not something that we
can do through our State Department or really effectively in
terms of social media and how we deal with that aspect of
countering violent extremism through a bureaucratic agency. And
I wanted to get the thoughts of each of you on that issue. Dr.
Levitt, you are obviously wanting to respond to that because
you reacted there.
Dr. Levitt. I just realized that my button was still on.
But I do want to answer, and I thank you for the question.
At The Washington Institute, we are doing a very large
study on all things CVE right now, and this is one of them.
There are a lot of jokes that have been made about the
global engagement center, including its name. Others in the
State Department say this is not what all of us do. But the
fact is I do think there is good reason to have moved from
where they were at the CSCC to this new idea. The idea, whether
it will work or not, I think is premature to say. And they are
being quite quiet I think until they get some wins under the
belt, and that is maybe not a bad idea.
But the whole idea, if it will work, is for government to
figure out how it can partner in this space with others. We are
not a good voice on this at all. Who can we partner with? In
what ways can we support them? It is not an American government
response, but with others in the region, Arab voices, Muslim
voices, on issues that we as governments should not be
commenting on, certainly are not very good on, religious
narratives, for example, and not just counter narratives, which
is countering a narrative that they are providing but providing
our own narratives. So who can we partner with? Who are the
others? And I think that is the main thing they are going to
have to be judged on, what partners do they partner with, how
successful are they, what kind of metrics do they have in
place. I do not think they have the answers to that yet because
this is also new. But to their credit, these are the things
they are talking about.
Senator Shaheen. And can I ask if either Mr. Wood or Mr.
Olsen would like to respond to that as well?
Mr. Wood. I would agree that a large portion of the CVE
effort has been wasted. And it is very, very easy to see why
that might be the case. Any conversation with someone who is at
all ISIL inclined will demonstrate the speed with which they
have been taught to destroy the credibility of anyone who is
associated with not just the United States but any number of
other enemies of the group, including clerical enemies of the
group, including other governments. As a part of their
indoctrination, they are taught how to find out the ways to
exploit weaknesses, to observe them, and to convince others of
the same.
So what I think we need to understand from that is, first
of all, that there is this kiss of death problem. Anything that
we touch does have a tendency to be discredited by our very
presence in the room. But that is not entirely something that
means that the CVE efforts in general should be pushed aside.
The efforts of non-affiliated, non-U.S. Government
affiliates, non-clergy affiliated people to ridicule ISIS, to
change its perception as a glorious movement to join to a
ridiculous one or to one that is essentially throwing one's
life away rather than achieving glory--that kind of effort is
being done without our help. And we need to make sure that if
we try to help it, that we do not destroy it.
Senator Shaheen. Thank you.
Thank you. My time is out.
The Chairman. Senator Flake?
Senator Flake. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I apologize if I am plowing old ground here.
Let me talk about Somalia for a minute. The ``Wall Street
Journal'' had a piece a while ago talking about terror
financing and the rules that we have which have caused a lot of
banks to just simply pull out of certain markets and not engage
in money transfers.
The Somali diaspora sends back about $1.3 billion. It is
between 25 and 45 percent of the entire economy there.
Has that been a net plus, this concern about terror
financing, or has it simply driven terror financing underground
in ways that are harder to track and more difficult to combat?
Mr. Wood, do you want to address that at all?
Mr. Wood. I cannot speak to the success of any particular
efforts, certainly not in the case of Somalia.
I will say that with ISIL, one of the great developments of
ISIL is a kind of self-financing model that they have had, that
is, the ability to ensure revenue through taxation, theft,
confiscation within its own territory. So the efforts to dry up
financing certainly should be pursued, but they are not going
to get us to the finish line.
Senator Flake. Any other thoughts?
Dr. Levitt. Yes, about Somalia. I will leave the Islamic
State issue aside.
I would just argue there that it is a different toolkit. We
actually have had great success especially recently with the
changed rules of engagement on the Islamic State. We can have
more success. It is just going to be a different toolkit than
we saw with yesterday's Al Qaeda.
The issue with Somalia is a really important one. It is not
in our interest to deny the average person the ability to send
money home to their families. To the contrary. When you think
about the larger radicalization issues, that can be a
contributor.
On the flip side, we do have to be very, very careful about
preventing different types of financial instruments from being
vulnerable to abuse, certainly large-scale abuse. And that was
the case with the remittances going back to Somalia. And what
then happened was a dynamic within the private sector where it
simply was not worth the risk to western banks to take on that
type of business.
It comes down to the questions we have already about
privacy Europe. How do we balance the risk? We have two
competing sets of interests here. They are both legitimate. We
have to stop terror financing going to Somalia. It was
happening. It is a real issue. How do we also enable these
remittances to go? Well, how can you change the risk calculus?
How do you overlay more risk analysis into this? This is
something that the terror finance community is looking into
very, very closely.
The bigger issue is this humanitarian one. It is not that
the terror finance activity is then being driven underground
simply because in a place like Somalia, there is not much
farther underground it can go. They cannot use banks. If they
cannot use remittances, they cannot send the money, but neither
can good people who are just trying to send money home. My
concern is from a no less legitimate humanitarian one, and we
need to be able to balance these concerns. There are efforts
trying to do that right now.
Senator Flake. Thank you.
Turn to Libya for a minute. President Obama in an interview
last week identified probably the biggest regret he has had of
his presidency was not to adequately plan for the aftermath in
Libya. We are seeing, obviously, links to al Shabaab and to
Boko Haram. To what extent is our focus on trying to lessen the
appeal with those groups simply overwhelmed by what is going on
in Libya now? There are 6,000 fighters we believe now. Where
should our focus in Africa be? Is the focus in sub-Saharan
Africa? And for these countries misplaced as long as we let
Libya fester as it is, where should our focus be?
Anybody want to take that? Mr. Wood, go ahead. I know we
have to focus everywhere, but I mean, is it futile to look at
these movements in sub-Saharan Africa without addressing Libya?
Mr. Wood. I think it is very important to start with Libya.
So the efforts against Boko Haram, undertaken by the Nigerian
Government, have shown some positive results so far.
I think that the area that has the greatest potential to
metastasize, though, is probably Libya, moving in a western
direction from there. I tend to think that there are simply
fewer people who are directing their attention toward Libya
right now than there are in the cases of other areas such as
Nigeria and that our attention would be well spent there.
Senator Flake. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Senator Kaine?
Senator Kaine. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks for holding
this hearing. It is very important testimony. I appreciate it.
I have two thoughts as I listen to the testimony, one
poetic and one prosaic. So Yates wrote a poem at the end of
World War I looking at post-war Europe's second coming, and he
basically described the situation as the best lack all
conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity.
I think the worst are full of passionate intensity in a
very sharp degree. And I think the question is whether the best
have conviction. There is an unsteadiness and an uncertainty
about strategy, about the message we communicate, not just the
United States, but other nations too, not just the executive,
but the legislative as well.
Recently on the prosaic side, a senior American military
leader said to me we have OPLANs but no strategy. And you each
talked about strategic points, and the chair asked questions
about that. Operations plans. You know, we got a plan on the
shelf if Putin goes into Latvia or if Kim Jong Un does
something about South Korea. But in terms of the strategy that
puts it together, it is lacking right now.
I have been pretty hard on this body, a body which I am
part of, so it is a self-criticism as well, that we are 2 years
into a war and we have not really had meaningful debate or vote
about it. I just do not think that is the way it is supposed to
be. And I think the debate that you have about an authorization
for is how you just pepper an administration with questions
about strategy, make them refine it and get better and better
and better. Then you do the debate in front of the public so
the public understands what the stakes are. But we are 2 years
in with no real prospect of that happening.
But I have also been pretty hard on the administration
because they were not quick to send us an authorization for a
war against ISIL. They have not really insisted on it, once
they sent it to us in February of 2015.
In addition, if you look more broadly about our military
posture vis-a-vis non-state actors like ISIL, the President
gave a speech now 3 years ago at the National Defense
University saying that the 2001 authorization needed to be
revised. Mr. Chair, we were part of a meeting that the White
House convened I think 2 years ago that was a very productive
bipartisan meeting where we talked, and we thought there was
going to be some follow-up from the White House about what do
we do with the sort of organic law of the country with respect
to our strategy against non-state actors. And there has been
zero follow-up from the White House at least that I have really
participated in. And maybe others have had those conversations.
And so I do think we are in a moment where we are dangerously
free from any strategy.
Some of the OPLANs are good and some of the things that we
are doing are good. But I agree with you. And this is a
Catholic theological point. You know, sins of omission can be
as bad as sins of commission. And I think while the things we
are doing are often pretty precise in the way they are
calibrated, I think there are a lot of things we are not doing
that are really a problem.
The chair raised the question about is it fair to talk
about strategy in this era when compared with the earlier era
dealing with the Soviet Union Truman doctrine containment. And
I think that is a fair question, and I like the Ned in the
First Reader analogy.
I think by the time we got into the 1960s or 1970s, the
strategy was pretty clear, but maybe when it was being formed,
it seemed as murky or challenging as it seems to us right now.
Truman had to go to a Congress that he had just lost both
houses in March of 1947 to ask for help to shore up the
governments of Greece and Turkey from Soviet-backed communist
internal parties. And he had just gotten drubbed in a
congressional election, but he had to go and lay out a strategy
with the risk that Congress would say we are not paying
attention to you. And a bipartisan Congress heard him. They did
not vote on the Truman doctrine.
But then a whole series of things happened. The vote on aid
to Greece and Turkey. Months later the Marshall commencement
speech at Harvard where he laid out the guts of the Marshall
Plan to rebuild European economies, even the economies of our
enemies. There was a strategy that had its strengths and
weaknesses, but it was articulated by a President. It
engendered bipartisan support. It was comprehensive, not just
military, but a whole range of things like Fulbright
scholarships, Peace Corps. There were a whole series of non-
military aspects that developed over time, and it lasted for
quite a while.
So I would encourage--and I know the chair has done this
before. We have had hearings to try to flush out what a
strategy might look like. I do think the world is much more
complicated in the array of powers than it was, but I also
think that it probably looked pretty hard at the time in the
1940s. So it is looking hard now. But I hope the administration
will follow up on its pledge of May 2013 to engage us in this
dialogue about how we look at the 9/11 authorization.
A question to you about countering violent extremism here
in this country. So we have already had a Virginian convicted
high school kid, convicted in Federal court for trying to
encourage people and facilitate, take people going to be
foreign fighters in Syria. We have had other people arrested at
the Richmond airport on their way circuitously to Syria.
What are some strategies that we ought to use as we look to
the success of CVE activities around the world or even anti-
gang strategies here in this country? What are some strategies
we should be focusing on to be effective on CVE activities here
at home?
Mr. Olsen. I can start and pass it on to my colleagues
here.
You know, the strategy--and Dr. Levitt mentioned this. For
the first time we now have a dedicated office. This is a
bureaucratic answer in part but an important one, which is an
office in the Department of Homeland Security, co-led by DHS
and the Department of Justice, staffed by the FBI and the
National Counterterrorism Center, for the first time an
interagency group that is formalized, devoted to this question.
So that is an important step, certainly not the fulfillment of
the program.
But in terms of strategies, as others have said, it is to
empower others to understand the message that ISIS and other
groups put out, that Al Qaeda puts out to understand that
message and to give those groups the capacity to withstand that
message. So it is training. It is building trust within Muslim
American communities as I talked about so that they feel
comfortable coming forward to law enforcement. The reality is
that Muslim American communities, families, and neighborhoods
are on the front lines of this effort, and they are going to be
the first individuals to see the signs of a friend or a
neighbor or a loved one becoming radicalized. And they are
going to be in the first position to take steps to stop it. So
to me, that is a critical part of the strategy.
Dr. Levitt. I really appreciate the question. Thank you
very much.
The task force is the right step, but let me be clear. The
task force is nascent. The decision to announce the formation
of the task force was apparently rushed, I understand, so that
it could have possibly made it into the State of the Union, but
it did not make it into the State of the Union but is now
officially created but not yet funded and also does not yet
have all the legal authorities. The Secretary of Homeland
Security spoke at a conference last week and said there are $10
million for those programs. It might as well be zero. $10
million is nothing. I am told more money is coming. That should
have come with the announcement of the program, and it is
suggesting that the intention is not sincere. And I believe it
is, but we should not be politicizing this.
I think personally the most important thing this task force
can do is find partners in communities and work with them on
things that are happening earlier in the process. Let us move
the needle earlier in the process. By default, we have put CVE
within law enforcement because we do not have, like the Brits
do, a department of communities and local government. But this
is not a law enforcement issue until a law has been broken. And
so I started my career at FBI. It should not necessarily be
FBI. It should be the local social workers or others who are
doing interventions. We have to do off-ramping. It should not
be the case--there will be cases where some teenager is going
to end up doing something. He is going to have to be convicted
and put in jail. There should be many, many more cases where we
as government, we as local communities work together. We have
got to work out the legal authorities, figure out how to do it,
and partner with one another to walk that person off the ledge
and off-ramp them.
And I will just say maybe the most important thing we will
say today is to underscore what Mr. Olsen just said, and that
is that Muslim American communities play a huge role in this.
They are being targeted by people who are radicalizing their
children. Some of the discourse in our country right now is
repulsive, and I know Muslim Americans who tell me that their
children are having conversations in school, who of us will
have to be deported. That is a painful and un-American
situation that we should not tolerate and it should not be part
of our discourse not because it undermines our ability to
counter violent extremism, which it does, and not because it
undermines our ability to do counterterrorism, which it does,
but because it is repulsive.
Senator Kaine. Can I ask, Mr. Wood, if you would just offer
some thoughts?
Mr. Wood. Sure.
Senator Kaine. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Wood. I would echo that the thoughts already being
aired. I would just say that, yes, the communities are by far
the most likely to notice that their members are being
radicalized. The families are most likely to realize this.
The question I think that many of them face, though, is by
turning in their kids, by turning in their friends, are they
ruining their lives or are they saving their lives. And we want
them to have no doubt about that. That might mean exercising
some discretion in prosecution as well.
The Chairman. If I could--it is my second interjection--and
I do not think I have used up my full 7 minutes yet.
We had a hearing last week just to talk about the debt
issues that we have as a nation. I think that maybe this side
of the aisle thought it was set up to criticize the
administration, but not a word of that came out. It was really
just to talk about debt and our lack of flexibility to solve
our Nation's problems.
As you talked about the Truman doctrine and containment and
what went with that, there were significant investments to deal
with that issue decade after decade after decade, culminating
in the 1980s.
The lack of process that we have here, the lack of
prioritization, the fact that demographic changes are taking
place and we are not dealing with those issues, the fact that
our budget process is a total joke, puts us in a situation
where we just respond to symptoms. There is no discussion of
dealing with the root cause in a real way and what that would
even mean.
I just want to say again that our debt issue--knowing where
our resource levels are--the fact that we know we are going to
have deficits from now on based on just the way we are set up
as a Nation really inhibits our ability to have a longer-term
strategy to deal with this issue in an appropriate way. That is
not a Republican statement, not a Democratic statement.
Unfortunately, it is just an observation of our inability to
prioritize and deal with things in an appropriate way.
With that, Senator Barrasso.
Senator Barrasso. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Director Olsen, you know, after the attacks in Brussels,
the State Department came out claiming that ISIS--it proved
that ISIS was under pressure because of the arrests of the
weekend, a couple of days before. ISIS also has been carrying
out other sophisticated explosive attacks in the Sinai,
threatened U.S. forces, continue to expand in Africa and a
number of other locations, groups in Libya, Tunisia, Algeria.
So ISIS may have been somewhat under pressure in that one area
of the cell, if you will, in Brussels, but at operational
strategic levels, they do not appear to be under pressure in my
assessment.
Do you think it is a correct assessment that ISIS is under
pressure? One, how do you view that? And then you had in your
written testimony mentioned if you had kind of the power to
draw up your own strategy or add things onto the current
strategy, could you maybe voice a little bit more about that?
Mr. Olsen. Sure. Thank you very much for the question.
Look, I think there was no doubt that ISIS is under some
degree of pressure in its safe haven in terms of the military
pressure brought to bear. Thousands of ISIS fighters have been
killed by the coalition airstrikes. Some of the territory they
gained in Syria and Iraq have been taken back.
I think what we are seeing now is, as I said, the sort of
fruits of the foreign fighter problem in terms of what is
happening in Europe. So there is not real pressure in terms of
bringing the extremist networks to ground, basically
understanding where they are, prosecuting them, disrupting
their activities. That pressure does not exist to the extent it
needs to.
I am not familiar exactly with what the State Department
meant, but there has been a sense--and I mentioned this
earlier--that I think they are opportunistic when they carry
out attacks, and I do think there is an effort perhaps, because
of the pressure in their safe haven, to maintain their
relevance by provoking attacks and carrying out attacks in
places like what we saw in Brussels, in Paris. But overall,
because of their reach and because of the level of their
propaganda, it is the case that we are going to continue to see
a certain amount of directed attacks and then inspired attacks
for the foreseeable future.
Senator Barrasso. Dr. Levitt, do you have anything you want
to add onto that in terms of under pressure?
Dr. Levitt. Thank you for your question.
I agree. I think the Islamic State is under more pressure
than it had been, again especially since the rules of
engagement were changed and we are seeing a real difference
since December with 40 percent of territory pushed back, this
ability to be able to--the inability to say that they are
remaining and expanding, senior leadership strikes hitting them
with frequency. But that does not mean that they will not be
able to do horrific things within the region and abroad, A.
B, I do not accept the argument that the reason we are
seeing attacks is because they are under pressure. It is true
that they appeared to have moved the plot in Brussels forward
faster and in Brussels, as opposed to Paris, because the cell
itself in the tactical sense was under pressure.
I think it is clear from the Islamic State--again, their
foreign terrorist fighter program for foreign-directed plots we
now know goes back to late 2013 before Adnani's call for
carrying out attacks in the West in response to Western
airstrikes. Part of their whole world view is about a fight
against the West. They do not just want to create their state
and leave us alone and we will leave you alone. They want a
fight in Dabiq. They want to provoke attacks and provoke a
fight, and I think that was part of--if we cannot provoke you
here, if you will not come and fight us here, we are going to
do it there too.
As we have success against them at home, yes, they will
have still more reason to want to carry out attacks to show
that they are not down for the count, that they are relevant,
that they are on the front pages, and to provoke fear and
literally terrorize. That does not mean it is the only or even
the primary reason for those attacks.
Senator Barrasso. Director Olsen, we are talking about
terrorism wanting to take the attack elsewhere. With the result
of this whole Iranian deal and the $100 billion of money going
there, there has been a lot of concern expressed on this
committee about some that money used for terrorism. And the
topic for today's discussion includes transnational terrorism.
Even Secretary Kerry said, yes, some of that money will likely
be used for terrorism. Could you give us your assessment of
that?
Mr. Olsen. Absolutely. There is no doubt that Iran, in
terms of sponsorship of terrorism, is the greatest state
sponsor in the world. And so there is concern as we see their
aggression in places like Yemen that there will be potentially
an uptick in terms of terrorist attacks that are linked back to
the Iranian regime. So I think speaking as a former government
official, this was a concern that really anytime that we looked
at the broader terrorism landscape, the concern about Iranian-
sponsored terrorist groups and acts of terror was always part
of the discussion.
Senator Barrasso. Earlier one of you testified to the fact
that for every one person killed by ISIS, it is nine by Assad.
And I wanted to just ask you about the Iranian influence now in
arming the militias, providing the Revolutionary Guard forces
to assist in fighting against ISIS, but at the same time, an
Iran-backed Shia militia threatened to attack U.S. troops who
are deployed in northern Iraq related to our fight against
ISIS.
Should we in the United States be concerned about the role,
the influence the Iranian regime is having in operations
specifically against ISIS, and is it just being used to help
Assad even further? Whoever wants to take it.
Dr. Levitt. I will just say when we talk about foreign
terrorist fighters, we all hear Sunni foreign terrorist
fighters. But there are about as many Shia foreign terrorist
fighters in this fight, and they are being organized and
directed by Iran. And I think it is not an exaggeration to say
that Iran, de facto or de jure--it is creating the equivalent
of a Shia foreign legion, which will be available to it for all
kinds of nefarious activities moving forward.
At the Washington Institute, we published a study on the
Shia foreign fighters just in Syria, leaving the Iraq side out
of it. And there is a huge issue here. Those Shia fighters are
not blowing things up in Brussels right now. And so I
understand, obviously, the focus on the Sunni side, but we are
going to have to walk and chew gum because there is a spectrum
of radical militant activity, and part of it is on the Shia
side of the equation. And that is something we are going to be
dealing with over the horizon. We need to keep an eye on that
too.
Senator Barrasso. Anything else you want to add on that?
Mr. Wood. Yes. The local narrative of ISIL is to say that,
Sunnis, you cannot go back. You cannot go back to Iraq. Iraq
has gone over to the Shia. It has gone over to Iran. And
insofar as the free reign of Iranian militias in Iraq
demonstrates that, it is a serious problem when we try to think
about how to put the pieces back together again.
Senator Barrasso. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Before going to Senator Markey, Director
Olsen, since you have done what you have done for our country
in a great way, how would you compare the differences between
the Shia and the Sunni relative to the most recent response
about their engagement in the world and some of the terrorist
activities? From the standpoint of our Nation's national
interests, talk about the differences there, if you would.
Mr. Olsen. Sure. It is a really important question,
Chairman.
You know, I go back to something that Dr. Levitt said.
Obviously, in this hearing, much of our focus is on the Sunni
extremism problem. When we think of ISIS, obviously, that is
rightly the focus. In terms of recent terrorist attacks, which
also rightly draw our attention, those are Sunni extremism
attacks, whether it is Brussels or Paris or San Bernardino.
In terms of our national interests, particularly in the
Middle East, the Shia problem perhaps does not get as much
attention as it should, and that is because--you put it well,
Matt, that we are seeing perhaps the sort of the ability of a
state, Iran, to develop a cadre of Shia extremists that can
carry out Iranian aggression in the region. And we are
certainly seeing that in Syria, of course, but we are also
seeing it in Yemen. So it perhaps does not grab the headlines
in the way attacks, obviously, that occur in western Europe do,
but it is one that is of important interest to the United
States.
The Chairman. Which would be of more concern to us relative
to our own national interests over time?
Mr. Olsen. I guess I would still rank Sunni extremism as
more of a concern because of the threats, the urgency that the
threats, whether it is Al Qaeda or ISIS, pose to the safety of
Americans, whether here at home or in Europe or around the
world. So I would still think--and I think this is probably
reflected in my old agency, NCTC. The bulk of the effort
analytically and in terms of collection is focused on the Sunni
extremism problem.
The Chairman. Dr. Levitt, I know you want to say something.
Dr. Levitt. I completely agree. I give a lot of thought to
this, and the way I put it is we have an urgent, immediate
threat from Sunni extremism. I think overall the more strategic
threat may be on the Shia side, and we have to be able to
address them both, even if the strategic one is not right now
the second as urgent in the sense of who is responsible for
Brussels, who is responsible for Paris. It is an urgent,
immediate threat. There is a strategic threat over this
horizon, and we best pay attention to it now or we will be
caught off guard tomorrow.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Senator Markey?
Senator Markey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, very much.
Mr. Wood, I would like to ask you this question. It is
about the role that the Sunnis are going to play in governing
their own cities after there has been a clearing. So what
happened about a couple months ago was the speaker of Iraq's
parliament, Salim al-Jabouri, came in to visit us, and he said
that Shia militia are still in Tikrit and that they hinder
stabilization. And last week, he was quoted in the ``Wall
Street Journal'' saying about Tikrit that displaced families
have returned, but now there is a feeling that another
occupation has begun. The Shia militias and armed groups are
still there imposing their will. This is not what the Sunnis
want.
So you look at Ramadi and you look at Mosul. So trying to
build a coalition to liberate Mosul when the Sunnis back in
Tikrit are emailing their cousins saying this is not working.
The Shia are still around us here. They are not letting this
go. And to some extent, the same thing is true over in other
parts of Iraq as well.
So if you look at Ramadi and you look at Tikrit, and now
you are trying to build a coalition up around Mosul to fight
ISIS, what is the confidence that a Sunni should have that it
is worth dying for, that they are willing to put their necks
out on the line if, at the end of the day, the Shia still wind
up blocking them from, in fact, having the kind of control that
they have been promised in terms of their regional governments?
Mr. Wood. I would say this is the single largest factor
that will prevent this situation from being resolved anytime
soon. And it is a reflection too of ISIL's awareness of this
long in advance of their taking territory. They observed what
happened in the 2000s. They observed the success that the
United States and others had in finding Sunni allies, and they
made sure that those Sunni allies are not alive. They
assassinated huge numbers of possible partners in advance of
taking the territory in Mosul and other areas of the Sunni-
dominated portions of Iraq. And that means that there is a long
road ahead of finding, first of all, Sunni Arabs in Iraq who
could stand in as leaders of a post-ISIS situation. In the
absence of them, then there would have to be a credible
government coming out of Baghdad that does not exist.
Senator Markey. So how much does that complicate taking
back Mosul if Sunnis do not have the confidence that the Kurds
or the Shia militia or the government itself, the Iraqi
government, is actually going to ultimately restore Sunni
control over that city? Is there not a great deal of additional
complexity, difficulty that gets added to that whole effort
that can be cured by having Tikrit and Ramadi under Sunni
control without interference from the Shia? And what should be
done by our government and others to say to the Iraqi
government, get out of Tikrit, get out of Ramadi? You know, let
the Sunnis control it. Let the good people run their own
institutions, and then we will have some confidence that the
people in Mosul will rise up and fight. How important will that
be?
Mr. Wood. Vital. And realistically I think it postpones the
liberation of Mosul certainly by months. I would say probably
by years.
The government in Baghdad, of course, is aware of these
problems but is tied in enough with Iran in particular to be
unsure that it really wants to solve them. And I think that
whatever pressure we can provide to suggest more activity on
that front, then we should. Unfortunately, I do not see any
quick way to do that. I do not see any pressure that we can
provide with the diminished influence that we already have in
Iraq. Unfortunately, I do not see a way through it.
Senator Markey. Do the other two of you agree with Mr.
Wood?
Dr. Levitt. So I think that this is the single largest
impediment to stability in Iraq. I think the single largest
impediment to dealing with the ISIL problem in Syria remains
the Assad regime. It is a separate issue.
Senator Markey. In Iraq? The Assad issue in Syria----
Dr. Levitt. In Syria.
Senator Markey.--is the single biggest obstacle to----
Dr. Levitt. In Syria. In Syria.
Senator Markey.--resolving the ISIS issue in Iraq? Is that
what you said?
Dr. Levitt. No, it is not what I said.
Senator Markey. So just focus on Iraq then, please.
Dr. Levitt. So here we go. In Iraq, the biggest issue is
the fact that the Sunni minority has no faith in the central
government, Shia-led central government.
Senator Markey. Should they have faith?
Dr. Levitt. The government is going to have to take steps
to enable them to have faith, which it has not yet.
And the single biggest problem there is that after
Ayatollah Sistani called for Shia to volunteer for military
service, instead what happened is people volunteered for
militia service, and those militias now appear to be here to
stay. The Hashd al-Shaabi are meeting with the ministry of
defense. They are asking for headquarters to be built. To the
extent that they are formalized, that is going to make the
Sunnis feel much more fear.
Senator Markey. So do you agree with Mr. Wood that that
could push back by, in fact, years our ability to liberate
Mosul? Do you agree with that conclusion?
Dr. Levitt. I think it will push back by years the ability
to have stability in Iraq. It is possible you could still go
forward and try and liberate Mosul. Liberating Mosul is not the
issue here. What comes after the liberation of Mosul? If we do
not do things now to make sure that the Sunnis have buy-in----
Senator Markey. Well, no. What Mr. Wood is saying is that
it does complicate taking back Mosul because you will not have
the full support of the Sunnis in that region who are saying it
is worth dying for to do it because the post-government
structure is very dubious in terms of the respect which will be
given to the indigenous Sunni population. You do agree with
that.
Dr. Levitt. I agree that it complicates it.
Senator Markey. You do not think it actually reduces then
the likelihood that there will be a pushback in the amount of
time it will take to liberate Mosul. You think that is an
independent question, what happens afterwards. You do not think
it actually affects the time frame it takes to actually
liberate Mosul?
Dr. Levitt. I do not think you are hearing what I am
saying. So I said, yes, I think it does affect the ability to
take Mosul. I think that ultimately Mosul could be militarily
taken, but it will not be held long unless you have the buy-in
from the Sunnis. The wrong way to do it is to have the Shia
militias do it. In the last statements from the Iraqi
government, we, the Shia militias intend to be at the
forefront. That would be disastrous.
Senator Markey. Okay. That would be a disaster.
I do not have any more time. Do you agree that would be
disastrous? You can just answer yes or no, Mr. Olsen. Would
that be a disaster?
Mr. Olsen. I do not know if it would be a disaster, but
obviously, all this complicates the effort.
Senator Markey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Senator Udall?
Senator Udall. Thank you, Chairman Corker.
And thank you all very much for being here today. It is a
very important hearing.
I want to ask about the caliphate a little more
specifically. I mean, some of the things that have been laid
out--and disagree with me if I am wrong, but 8 million to 10
million under the control, somewhere in that range, is the
numbers that I have seen. Brett McGuirk's recent numbers on
fighters is 19,000 to 25,000 fighters. But they have lost, as
you have indicated in your testimony, 40 percent in Iraq and 10
percent in Syria. But they are still in control.
What I am really wondering is with the way they raise the
revenue--you have the taxes. You have the oil. You have the
kidnapping and the ransom and all of that. Why do people with
the numbers of fighters and then the large group of people that
are under control--why do people under the caliphate accept it?
Why do they pay taxes? Why do we not hear anything about
anybody rebelling? Are there rebellions going on within these 8
million to 10 million people? Is there any effort to kind of
push back after they see brutality and things in their
communities? And where are we on that front with what exists
there in terms of how the people feel about the governance that
has been imposed on them by this caliphate?
Mr. Wood. There is certainly evidence that people who live
under ISIL are not unified in their support for it. That is,
there is evidence of people fleeing it. Of course, many more
fleeing Bashar al-Assad in Syria, but still evidence of people
fleeing the caliphate. There is no ability to be a loyal
opposition within it. So, of course, we are not going to see
overt activism against them.
The reason, though, that people are willing to accept the
caliphate, beyond just what they are forced to accept, is that
the alternatives that they have had in recent years and that
they see offered to them for the future are not much better.
They are looking at the caliphate as a source of stability, a
source of governance, and I think probably last as a source of
validation in the religious sense that the caliphate itself
prefers to headline its governance with. So if they are looking
as an alternative to government by ISIL to, say, the government
of Bashar al-Assad or chaos, then they might prefer for purely
pragmatic reasons to have amputations and crucifixions and so
forth.
Senator Udall. Mr. Levitt, please.
Dr. Levitt. I agree. First of all, many Sunnis do not see
an alternative.
Second, many Sunnis see this as not ideal but some level of
protection from the sectarian fighting from the Shia side or
from the Assad regime.
Third, extreme ultra-violence and barbarism goes a long way
to intimidate a population, and the average person wants to get
by and have their family get by another day.
And finally, there is a cost to having an uprising that
does not get outside help and then is, if not immediately, over
time suppressed. And they do not see the prospects of outside
help in that regard. And so there is a tremendous cost to these
people who are effectively--most of them--hostages under
Islamic State control.
And you hear anecdotally cases of people who have left who
said, look, when they first came in, I figured, okay, they are
fundamentalist extremists but they are fellow Sunnis and there
will be law and order. It might not be my law, but as long as I
live by it, I will not smoke. I will get by. And then they
leave because they realize it was so much worse than they
thought it would be. But ultra-violence then will go a long way
to subdue a population.
Senator Udall. Mr. Olsen?
Mr. Olsen. I generally agree with my colleagues here. I
think we are seeing an erosion in terms of what is happening
and how individuals who have been subjugated are viewing what
it is like to live under ISIS. And I think over time, the hope
is that that becomes--that sense strengthens, and overall that
as ISIS loses territory, its claim to have established a
caliphate will be eroded and the group will lose really is
central claim.
Senator Udall. You have talked about countries in the
region in fighting this terrorist threat being participants,
collaborating with them and working with them and building
regional coalitions. Which are the countries that you do not
think are helping our goals and our objectives over there? Who
is not really stepping up to the plate? Are we really just
divided along Shia and Sunni lines in terms of the countries
and looking at them?
Mr. Olsen. I am trying to think of the countries. You know,
there is obviously the issue that you just mentioned of the
Sunni-Shia divide. But countries in the region are helping to
varying degrees. I think the one country that stands out that
is helping more now than it has in the past is Turkey, and that
has made a big difference. They are a vital part of the
coalition effort.
Senator Udall. The flip side of my question is who is not.
Dr. Levitt. I am going to answer it slightly differently. I
do not think the problem is who is and who is not because I
really do think it is varying degrees.
I think the bigger problem is this. You can have a hard
time, if you look around the region, even though this is
happening in their backyard, finding a country for whom the
Islamic State is the number one problem. Maybe it is the Kurds.
Maybe it is Assad. Maybe it is the Shia or maybe it is the
Sunnis. The Islamic State is on almost all of their lists, but
for us, it is pretty much number one and for almost none of
them is it number one. And that leads them to doing things
differently, prioritizing things differently, and that is where
the tension is, not a good list/bad list.
Senator Udall. Mr. Wood, do you have anything to add on
that?
Mr. Wood. I would echo that last point in particular. The
problem is simply that it is not in the primary interests of
most of the players in the region to focus their efforts on
ISIL. And there are major costs that are associated with doing
that. The only way to actually get their cooperation I think
would be to make sure that it was in their interest, and that
is not something that we are capable of doing because the
calculation is due to regional dynamics that are longstanding.
Senator Udall. Thank you for your responses.
The Chairman. We had a similar problem, if you will
remember, with Pakistan. Our interests and their interests are
very, very different as it relates to Afghanistan. It is very
hard to redirect that and keep them away from the duplicity
that they have been carrying out.
Senator Murphy?
Senator Murphy. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Wood, in your testimony you talked about the fact that
the ISIS message played into the existential, political, and
religious desires of many inhabitants of the regions in which
ISIS grows. It is very, very difficult for us to talk about the
role that religion plays and the perversion of religion plays
in this debate. It is outside of our lane. We look really bad
when we do it. In the context of this presidential campaign,
none of us want to feed into the really awful and
discriminatory narrative that comes out of some candidates'
mouths.
But I want to read you a quote from Farah Pandith, who was
our country's first U.S. Special Representative to Muslim
communities, and ask, Mr. Wood, you to react to it, but others
as well.
She said that she traveled to 80 countries between 2009 and
2014. She said each place that I visited, the Wahabbi influence
was an insidious presence, changing the local sense of
identity, displacing historic, culturally vibrant forms of
Islamic practice, and pulling along individuals who were either
paid to follow their rules or who became their own custodians
of the Wahabbi world view. Funding all of this was Saudi money,
which paid for things like textbooks, mosques, TV stations, and
the training of imams.
I do not know how we do this because I think we are very
course in our interventions, but should it not at least be a
greater portion of our dialogue, the role that Wahabbi
influence plays in the seeds of extremism, how people are
primed essentially to hear the messages that are coming from
ISIS in part because the moderates are increasingly losing the
fight to some of the more hard-line elements that are purveying
a certain form of intolerant Islam? I am not asking you for
solutions here, but as we try to diagnose the problem and we
try to diagnose why there is this susceptibility to ISIS
messaging, should we not admit that the tension within the
religion is a big part of this?
Mr. Wood. Yes. And I appreciate the caution that you allude
to that we have to have when we are dealing with this kind of
issue.
But certainly if you look at the theological beliefs of
ISIL fighters, of ISIL ideologues and you compare them to
mainstream Wahabbi beliefs, they are different in important
ways. They are similar in many ways as well. The intolerance is
there. The brutality is there.
I have done some reporting on public opinion in Saudi
Arabia in recent months. The level of support for Abu Bakr al
Baghdadi as caliph among Sunnis is in double-digit percentages
according to what I have seen. Now, the level of support for,
if not him as caliph, another caliph who perhaps would differ
not by much is even higher than that. So I do think that
understanding the religious background of Wahabbism as my
colleague, Farah Pandith, has mentioned, yes, is important.
The other important thing to see too is the ways in which
that Wahabbi strain has been mobilized to oppose ISIS. The
state religion of Saudi Arabia is a kind of Wahabbism that is
quietist that in theory is opposed to violent action to oppose
Muslim leaders in particular. So I think we need to look at it
as fine-grained an analytical toolkit as we possibly can,
seeing the ways in which that kind of intolerant Islam has
certainly fed into and made fertile the ground for ISIL's
theology and also seeing the ways it can be mobilized probably
not by us but by others to oppose it.
Senator Murphy. Mr. Levitt, do you want to add anything?
Dr. Levitt. I should put cards on the table. Farah is a
good friend. We were Ph.D. students together. She is wonderful.
I am glad you quoted her.
I would just say there is a difference maybe between how
this plays out in the region in Muslim majority countries and
how it does in the West. It is important in both contexts. I
think Graeme presented some really important ideas on how it is
facilitating itself in Muslim majority areas.
When I was in Belgium and I asked authorities about this--
well, let me be clear. I did not raise it at all. Almost every
Belgian authority I spoke to raised the issue of the
predominance of Salifi ideology in Belgium with me, and so I
would ask about it. And what they kept saying is some version
of here is one person's quote. Salifism is mainstream in
Belgium. Not all Salifists are terrorists, but all terrorists
were targeted for recruitment by Salifists in these
neighborhood extremist networks.
And what I walked away from--if you look at most of these
people who are involved in crime and are still drinking and
using drugs after they have sort of become Salifists or they
become Islamic State, is that they are being radicalized to the
idea of the Islamic State far more than any idea of Islam. To
them, not knowing much about Islam, the Salifists or Salifi
jihadi really ideas that they are presented with, this is
Islam.
So one thing we need to do is not counter the narrative but
allow mainstream Muslim organizations to present what they are.
And the other thing is, especially in the West, we should
not back down or be bashful about standing up for the Western
ideal of tolerance.
Senator Murphy. Mr. Olsen, let me ask you one additional
question. We are talking about how you get Muslim nations to
engage in the fight against extremism when many of them on the
Sunni side are much more interested in fighting Iran and vice
versa.
We are talking about yet another weapons sale to Saudi
Arabia to resupply their munitions that they have used inside
the civil war in Yemen, which is essentially a proxy war
between the Saudis and the Iranians. Would a pretty easy step
not be for the United States to say that if you want a resupply
for the weaponry which you are going to use in a civil war
between two nation states that you, as a condition, continue to
be a partner in the fight against extremism? I mean, these GCC
countries in part have walked away from the bombing campaign
against ISIL in order to fight in Yemen, and we are about to
resupply them without, it appears, any explicit conditions that
they rejoin the fight.
Mr. Olsen. So I cannot speak directly to the particular
weapons sale that you mentioned, Senator.
I would concur with Dr. Levitt's point about the concern
that in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries, ISIS is one
issue but not a priority issue. And we have certainly seen that
in the context of the conflict with the Houthis in Yemen.
At the same time, my own experience has been that the
Saudis have been very close and reliable partners in the
counterterrorism fight over the years.
Senator Murphy. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Just to follow up before we close out, from
your perspective, could you state the relationship between
Wahabbism and ISIS today?
Mr. Wood. I would say it is a complicated but still direct
relationship. If you were to look at the texts that ISIS uses
for the indoctrination of its recruits, many of them are
indistinguishable but for very slight changes, slight but
important changes, from Wahabbi texts that you would see in
Saudi Arabia. Some of them literally are textbooks that come
from Saudi Arabia.
The Chairman. So the text is similar. I'd like an answer
from all of you, if you would. What about the clerics
especially outside of Saudi Arabia itself? From your
perspective, what has been their role?
Mr. Wood. I think what is most important, both with the
texts and the individuals and their preaching, is the
normalization of a kind of view of Islam that is extremely
intolerant, that is extremely anti-Shia, and that is extremely
attractive as well to anyone who might be looking for a kind of
violent outlet for their religious beliefs. That is something
that has been happening. Salifism or Wahabbism has been around
for, of course, centuries, but for a matter of decades, there
has been a kind of normalization of this intolerant view of the
religion. And I think that comes to fruition in just one of
several violent ways in the form of ISIS.
The Chairman. Dr. Levitt?
Dr. Levitt. I agree. The main connective tissue is making
intolerance something acceptable and normative. There is
ideological connective tissue. The Islamic State selectively
chooses its textual basis, it uses this one and not that one,
but it is not the case, by any stretch of the imagination, that
every Wahabbi or even every Salifi jihadi, and certainly not
every Salifi is an Islamic State supporter. But Islamic State
supporters or Islamic State members who are operatives will
subscribe to elements at least of that ideology, and they will
often take it a step further. So there is that connective
tissue. One word. It is the intolerance and the hatred of
others. You subscribe to that. It is a slippery slope and it
can take you to even more dangerous places.
The Chairman. Dr. Olsen?
Mr. Olsen. I just agree with my colleagues again. I do
think part of, I think, your point, Senator, we have trouble
talking about this, and part of the concern, which is a real
concern--I brought this with me from my time in government--is
that we do not want to paint with a broad brush when we talk
about the religious foundations for what we see in ISIS
messaging. One and a half billion Muslims. Obviously, the vast,
vast majority have nothing to do with this ideology or, in
particular, with ISIS or terrorism.
At the same time, at NCTC, we spent time in terms of the
analysts understanding that message, understanding both how to
counter it, understanding how to get amplification and voice to
the messages from both the government, but more importantly
from those outside the government that can help to defeat that
message.
So it is a complicated issue. I think the point about
intolerance is a very good one. I guess the other thing I would
say is when you look at, just in terms of the United States,
homegrown violent extremists, the ones that the FBI is
tracking, the 250 or so that the FBI Director has talked about
either going or trying to go to Syria, it is very hard to draw
any kind of general points about those individuals. This is the
U.S. radicalized population. Many are converts. Many are born
Muslim. They come from different walks of life. I think it is
much more difficult to draw some of those same conclusions
about the U.S. population as you can when you look perhaps at
populations inside Syria and Iraq who have joined ISIS. Just a
word of caution there.
The Chairman. To get back to where Senator Murphy was
going, at least partially with his questioning: you have the
issues of poverty and certainly politics in the region which
exclude and do not take into account the needs of Sunnis, and
it creates an environment for ISIS to flourish? Would that be
fair? When you have clerics who are out there speaking of
intolerance? Am I missing something here?
Mr. Olsen. As far as that goes, I think that is accurate.
The Chairman. So Western forces, not military forces,
trying to counter that would make it even worse in all
likelihood. So if we know that, what is the best way for us to
counter what the Wahhabis are doing around the world in helping
create this environment that is ISIS-rich? How do we counter
that?
Dr. Levitt. In a nutshell, I will just say you do not cede
them the playing field. If there is a community that needs
support, the support that should be forthcoming should not only
be from the extremists. It does not have to be from the United
States. Who are we partnering with? The vast majority of the
Muslim world, certainly the Muslim American population, is
extremely moderate. And who are we partnering with? So across
this spectrum, you will have religious leaders that are part of
the problem. You will have many more I believe who are part of
the solution. But even in the West, we have not yet grasped
this.
In Brussels, I was told when I was there that there are 114
imams, mostly brought in from the Middle East or North Africa.
Of those 114, only eight speak any of the three local
languages. So for those third or fourth generation Muslims who
primarily do not speak Arabic, they cannot communicate with
these imams. Even if they are not extreme, if they are
moderate, they cannot be used as part of the solution because
there is literally a language barrier. So we could work with
Western governments, governments in the region to try and
bridge even something as simple as that.
The Chairman. Anyone else?
Mr. Wood. I would just add that the interpretation that
Wahabbism or Salifism or Salifi jihadism puts forth is one that
has been around for a long time. It is a view of a religion. It
is far beyond my capacity or that of a government I think to
resolve a religious schism or contending interpretation that
has existed and not been resolved through hundreds of years of
dispute. So all of which is simply to say that we need to
moderate our expectations for what we can do even with the
kinds of support that we can and should give to more moderate
interpretations.
The Chairman. Senator Cardin?
Senator Cardin. Mr. Chairman, I just really wanted to
compliment this panel and this hearing. I found it extremely
helpful. Obviously, it is extremely frustrating when we are
going after an entity that does not have one location and one
particular game plan, where it pops up in different parts of
the world at different times and has territorial ambitions. I
just thought that you all really centered in on strategies or
what needs to be part of an ongoing strategy, which includes
U.S. leadership at the forefront and the ability to get
coalition partners to be engaged.
I thought your point about cutting off safe havens at an
early stage so that they do not become a bigger problem, as we
have seen obviously with what has happened in Syria, providing
a place in which ISIL could thrive--that is an important part
of the equation now in Libya.
I also thought that the territorial issues are important
and they continue to be able to not only retake but to maintain
the territories away from ISIL, which requires good governance,
which is perhaps the most challenging of all of our objectives,
how we can get governance that not only has the confidence and
respect of all the people of the country, particularly Syria,
but also Iraq, but that it can function to protect all the
population, including the Sunni tribal areas. That is not easy,
but you have made that point very, very clear.
Cutting off their support, obviously, whether it is the
financial supports through oil or whether it is the propaganda
machines that they use, all that is critically important.
Then lastly something that America is not good at and that
is patience because this is going to take a long time.
So I thank you very much. It was very helpful to me.
The Chairman. Thank you. I agree. I think whenever we set
these hearings up, you never know whether they are going to be
helpful or not. In this case, all three of you have been
outstanding. We thank you for your contributions here in
helping us to understand more fully what we are dealing with
and to help others who are observing.
I hope that you will answer questions that will come in a
fairly timely fashion. I know each of you is busy. We would
like to keep the record open through the close of business
Thursday, but if you could get back on those fairly promptly,
we would appreciate it.
We thank you for the role you play in helping all of us
understand more fully the challenges we have and again for
being here today and preparing to do so. And we look forward to
seeing you again. You have been extraordinary, and we
appreciate it. Thank you very much.
The meeting is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:20 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
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