As of this writing, we are witnessing the third major terrorist attack in the space of five weeks as Munich hunkers down while multiple gunmen savage the German city. If there is one constant playing out in recent terror attacks in Europe and the U.S. it is that terrorism can occur by inspiration and imitation alone, not by direction. Hatred is the key motivational factor and it is too often passed off as ideology.
So it was for Omar Mateen, the 29-year-old self-radicalized Islamic terrorist who stormed an Orlando nightclub last month with an assault rifle and automatic pistol in hand. The end result was 50 dead and 50 wounded in the worst mass shooting in United States history and the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil since the events of September 11, 2001, in New York City, Washington D.C. and rural Pennsylvania where close to 3,000 people perished as commercial airliners were used as weapons of mass destruction.
“When we talked about these incidents, we have to be a little more holistic when assessing who might be tomorrow’s next perpetrator,” warned Dr. Errol Southers, the Director of Homegrown Violent Extremism Studies at the University of Southern California, who was among several terror experts who addressed security executives at the SIA Government Summit in June. Dr. Southers will be a featured Keynote Speaker at the upcoming Secured Cities conference in Houston on November 15-17 (www.securedcities).
Dr. Southers strongly believes that it is the homegrown terrorist who presents a clear and present danger to both the U.S. and Europe. His statement was substantiated yet again last month when more than 80 people were killed and 100 wounded in the resort town of Nice on the French coast when a man using a large truck plowed into victims as they watched Bastille Day fireworks.
This attack in France comes a little more than a year after a series of coordinated terrorist attacks occurred in Paris, and the city's northern suburb, Saint-Denis on November 13, 2015. Beginning that evening, three suicide bombers struck near the Stade de France in Saint-Denis, followed by suicide bombings and mass shootings at cafés, restaurants and a music venue in central Paris.
The attackers, all homegrown French citizens, killed 130 people, including 89 at the Bataclan theater, where they took hostages before engaging in a stand-off with police. Another 368 people were injured, 80–99 seriously. Seven of the attackers also died, while the authorities continued to search for accomplices. The attacks were the deadliest in France since World War II and the deadliest in the European Union since the Madrid train bombings in 2004. France had been on high alert since the January 2015 attacks on the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine and a Jewish supermarket in Paris that killed 17 people and wounded 22, including civilians and police officers.
“So this attack scenario is now new. But what is not new is that the individuals engaged in Paris were Frenchmen. This is a new reality now – homegrown terror threats -- whether they are here in the U.S. or in Europe,” he said.
A recent study assessed over 227 individual homegrown terrorists in the EU and found that most terrorist were of non-European “extraction” but that a significant amount were born or raised in Europe. Many of the terrorists were second and third generation immigrants. In Europe, most homegrown terrorists are thought to come from middle class, while “general” terrorists are part of the lower and middle class socioeconomic groups. In the U.S., homegrown terrorists are mostly from the middle class socioeconomic group as well.
“I don’t think we can look at what is happening here at home without linking it to with what is happening overseas and the resurgence of Islamic terror organizations overseas. Syria has obviously been at the forefront of this activity. You have the largest convergence of foreign fighters that are co-mingling with Islamic extremist organizations and it’s in a scope that we have not seen since the 1980s in Afghanistan. You have had almost 40,000 foreign fighters from 120 different countries flock to Syria and Iraq to join ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and other affiliate groups,” said Maseh Zarif, a professional staff member of the House Homeland Security Committee. "We are engaged in a war, make no mistake about that. And it will be fought on our doorstep."
