Lone wolf terrorists as the most dangerous terrorism threat

¶ … terrorists are considered the most dangerous and why?

Many terrorism experts consider so-called lone wolf terrorists to be the most dangerous terrorist threat of all because of their unpredictability. While it is possible to some extent to monitor the behavior and actions of organized terrorist groups and to infiltrate them, lone wolves by definition act alone and cannot really be traced or anticipated until they do actual harm. "The individual terrorist has proven to be among the most innovative, creative, and dangerous in terrorism history" (Thompson 2013). Examples of lone wolves include the Boston Marathon bombers, Timothy McVeigh, and the Unabomber. While groups such as Al Qaida have been carefully monitored by various law enforcement agencies due to their substantial organizational outreach, which includes training camps and even online communication, lone wolves operate outside of the sphere of international monitoring. There are no potential informants that might turn on the larger organization because the only organization is the individual or one or two trusted confederates. Technology makes it fairly easy to construct crude and effective mechanisms of destruction. The Internet gives lone wolves access to "access to information on tactics, targets and weapons, ideology, causes" (Thompson 2013). Bioterrorism as the anthrax scare of recent date illustrates, is a new and more pervasive threat than in previous decades because of the ease of contacting and ordering from illicit sources.

In contrast to other types of organized terrorists, lone wolves "have little or no constraints on their level of violence. They are not concerned with alienating supporters (as would some terrorist groups), nor are they concerned with a potential government crackdown following an attack" (Thompson 2013). A terrorist group often has a specific, articulate objective that it wishes to accomplish, such as gaining publicity for its cause or striking fear into the heart of a legitimate government such as that of Israel or the United States. A lone wolf may have a vague objective or simply wish to vent fury out on a world that has wronged him. He has no specific interest in allowing his group to perpetuate itself after the attack. Although "some lone wolves combine personal grievances and problems with a political or religious cause in order to justify their violence" it is not necessarily easy to anticipate how this will take form and be used against various targets, since the terrorist may not have an obvious purpose and objective, versus support for the Palestinian cause in Israel or the desire to attack the U.S. government and economic structure as in the case of 9/11 (Thompson 2013). The choice of bombing the Boston Marathon, other than being the location of a large number of individuals, was not shaped by a coherent, outside ideology evident to anyone besides the two brothers orchestrating the attacks.

Perhaps the most dangerous lone wolves of all, however, are those that arise from within the organizations they strike back at. For example, as Maj. Nidal Maljik Hasan shot "fellow soldiers and others at Fort Hood, Texas in protest to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan" even though he was a member of the U.S. Armed forces and he was not a suspect at all as a potential terrorist (Thompson 2013). Hasan was an individual who showed no signs of mental illness or radicalism to the outside world and was in a position of trust when he fired upon his own people; he was supposed to be the guardian not the enemy. Such idiosyncratic profiles of lone wolf terrorists further complicate attempts to prevent them from causing mayhem before they act; almost by definition they seldom fit into preexisting categories and defy easy generalizations about the types of persons who commit acts of terror.

Part B: Name three terrorist groups and explain their objectives and ideologies. Identify the groups you choose as either domestic or international terrorists. Include in your answer two religious terrorist groups and one other type of terrorist group.

One of the most highly-publicized terrorist groups of recent memory is that of ISIS. ISIS is somewhat unique as a terrorist organization. It was once affiliated with Al-Qaida but now has characteristics of a quasi-military state. It "boasts some 30,000 fighters, holds territory in both Iraq and Syria, maintains extensive military capabilities, controls lines of communication, commands infrastructure, funds itself, and engages in sophisticated military operations" (Cronin 2015). However, its fundamental mission remains religious in nature: it is a Sunni extremist group committed to eradicating both Western and also Shiite influence not only from Iraq (where it originated) but the entire Middle East. ISIS "seeks to control territory and create a 'pure' Sunni Islamist state governed by a brutal interpretation of sharia; to immediately obliterate the political borders of the Middle East that were created by Western powers in the twentieth century; and to position itself as the sole political, religious, and military authority over all of the world's Muslims" (Cronin 2015). ISIS has a complex administrative structure which makes it difficult to strike back and dismantle the leadership and also controls territory with considerable oil wealth which enables it to sustain itself with its own funding.

HAMAS, the pro-Palestinian organization, is also (somewhat controversially) classified as a terrorist organization by most of the major Western powers. Hamas began as a splinter faction of the radical Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and "the group's charter calls for establishing an Islamic Palestinian state in place of Israel and rejects all agreements made between the PLO and Israel" ("HAMAS," 2015). The ascent of Hamas in 2006 over the secular Fatah party marked a notable shift in a negative direction of the negotiations taking place between the Palestinian governing authorities and Israel. Israel views HAMAS (with some justification) as opposed to its very existence given the violence HAMAS-affiliated terrorists have perpetrated against it and "HAMAS continues to refuse to recognize or renounce violent resistance against Israel" ("HAMAS," 2015). Suicide bombings and rocket attacks are the most notable weapons used in the fight HAMAS has waged to establish a Palestinian state and enforce its religious ideology.