US Counterterrorism Efforts: Challenges of Neutralizing Terrorism

Terrorism is a challenge affecting the world and the United States is at the frontline in the fight against it. The new terrorist groups that have formed in the Middle East in the past few years has made it difficult for the US to neutralize terrorism. Most of the terrorist groups are formed to protest some of the foreign democracy and the influence of the west to their politics, social and economic perspectives. One challenge that affects the counterterrorism efforts in the US is the rate at which some of those terrorist groups recruit new members. The foreign policy of the US affects the Middle East in many positive and negative ways and this attracts different reactions from the citizens. One of the most dangerous groups is the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which is officially known as the Islamic State (IS). The group has many followers in many countries across the world (Khan & Estrada, 2016). Most of their followers are likely to get recruited into the terrorist groups as compared to others. The high rate of recruitment is attributed to the increased use of the internet and social media. In this research, the question is how recruiting ISIS members into terrorist organizations affects counterterrorism in the US.

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Governments and the US support equality, freedom of speech and worship, and religious tolerance. However, ISIS and other similar groups are against such a coexistence and have fought to ensure only their religion, Islam is followed in the areas they control. They also believe that the US is after their oil wells and benefit from the resources in their countries. When the ISIS succeeds in recruiting many people into their terrorist organizations, the counterterrorism efforts are at risk of losing the battle. The foreign policy used by the United States is focused on denying the terrorists the resources they require to operate ad to suffocate them financially. In the current administration, President Trump has adopted a foreign policy that resembles that of his predecessors. However, he also has many strict and biased ways of dealing with Muslims and states that are mainly Muslims and this includes the travel bans and sanctions. The bans have affected many people and mostly the students from the Middle East (Schwartz, 2017). When such people feel that their challenges are related to the foreign policies of the US, there is a high chance that they will join terrorist organizations like ISIS. Therefore, ISIS followers are more likely to join a terrorist organization when the foreign policy of the US has direct negative impacts on their lives.

Research Question

How does recruiting ISIS followers into terrorist organizations affect counterterrorism in our nation?

Hypothesis

ISIS followers are more likely to join a terrorist organization when the foreign policy of the US has direct negative impacts on their lives.

Literature Review

It is necessary to consider how recruiting ISIS followers into terrorist organizations affects counterterrorism in our nation. After the 9/11 attack on the United States, all efforts were focused on the terrorist groups in the efforts to neutralize them and reduce their ability to plot such major aggressiveness to the countries that did not support their ideologies. President Bush, the then US president, started operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, to fight the terrorist groups. The administration also focused on the locals, whereby surveillance was done on all possible suspects. Most of them were arrested without a warrant and incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay. The attack marked a new era in the way the world viewed terrorist groups. When President Barack Obama took over, he focused on the use of drones to attack the suspects and he achieved several landmarks like the killing of Osama Bon Laden, who was behind the 9/11 attack. The leading barrier to the fight against ISIS is the increased use of the internet and social media to attract and recruit new members. According to Awan (2017), ISIS has made use of the power of the social media to reach out to new targets and it is difficult for the government authorities to control these avenues and regulate their usage.

The foreign policy adopted by the US government has a direct impact on the rate at which ISIS members get recruited into the terrorist groups. By 2017, it was estimated that more than 750 Britons had traveled to Syria to join ISIS and fight against the government that seemed to implement policies that were against the wishes of the ISIS (Awan, 2017). The foreign policy used by the US and its allies has direct impacts on the will to join the terrorist groups. For example, the choice of using drones to attack the suspected terrorists has left many civilians dead. One of the major questions surrounding the use of drones is the ethical question of the drones killing civilians (Byrne, 2018). Most of the drones are not accurate and they kill many innocent people. That is an example of the direct negative impacts of the US policy to solve the challenge of terrorism. The use of drones increased during President Obama's administration and this has attracted many critics who feel they have more negative impacts than benefits. When the same drones were used in Pakistan, many civilians were killed and their accuracy was questioned again (Mahmood, 2016). The citizens who feel the need to revenge for their loved ones who die in such attacks are likely to join ISIS and terrorist groups.

The governing policy of the strategies used by the US government remains a mystery to many people. For example, the legality and policies related to the use of drones in Pakistan are unclear. The US has the resources, technology and ability to implement the foreign policy they find suitable to deal with terrorists. The influence of the US on other countries makes it easy for it to push for sanctions and similar strategies to force governments to comply with their wishes. However, if the foreign policy is ineffective and attracts major antagonism, the counter-impacts could have many long-lasting impacts. ISIS followers are guided by the beliefs that they are attacked and mistreated across the world, mostly by the US and its allies. ISIS I almost always against the foreign policies that the US implements. However, some of the policies could have bigger impacts than others. The continued feeling of oppression attracts many of these followers to the terrorist groups where they are made to feel like they have the power to stop the policies or to revenge.

Joining the terrorist groups can also be triggered by political utterances and policies. During his campaigns, President Trump suggested that the families of the terrorists should also be tortured and killed. The comments attracted a lot of sensitive criticism and threaten the lives of many people in the regions where ISIS operates (Haberman, 2016). The increased rate at which new members have joined ISIS can be attributed to both the internet and the political recklessness as seen during the presidential campaigns on the US. It is evident that most of the ISIS members are easier for terrorist groups to recruit than any other group. The ideology they have about their need to fight the US is already formed and they join these groups to implement what they already believe in. The other challenge is that the current administration is not transparent about the counterterrorism plans it has and how they will be implemented. The president promised to make drastic changes to the policy that his predecessor used and this remains unclear what that meant.

Several theories have been put forward to explain the reason why people engage in terrorist activities. There are five main ones and these include ideology, which focuses on the jihadist ideology that makes people fight to safeguard their religion. The theory of root causes focuses on the reasons why people engage in terrorism and mostly the historical factors that contribute to these activities. State sponsorship is the third one and this focuses on the cases whereby the terrorists are supported by the state to achieve a goal, mostly political ones. Such a scenario leads to a strong establishment of groups that have access to the resources they need (Piccinni, Marazziti, & Veltri, 2018). The other one is the rational choice that looks at how people make choices to make the terrorists and lastly the group dynamics that looks at how people influences each other to join the terrorist groups (Marazziti, Veltri, & Piccinni, 2018). The theories explain the way different people decide to join the terrorist organizations and this helps analyze how the US foreign policy influences these decisions. The dependent and independent variables are summarized by the literature above and it is possible to understand the relationships among them.

The recruitment of ISIS followers to the terrorist groups has also triggered a new view on the importance and effectiveness of foreign aid in dampening terrorism in the affected countries. There is a general view that the intervention of the US government in some of the countries in the Middle East helps reduce the effects of terrorism and makes the terrorist groups less effective (Savun & Tirone, 2018). The foreign aid can be used to support both political, civil and social changes in the countries. However, the ISIS followers are against the intervention and they consider it a way through which the US government takes advantage of their countries for their benefits. However, the US government can use their resources to change the views of the ISIS followers and to support the governments to neutralize the terrorist groups. The focus of most of the terrorist groups is to stand for their beliefs against foreign influence and protect their territories and religion.

In the fight for their territories and religion, ISIS followers are frustrated by the counterterrorism efforts of the US and most of them get motivated to join the terrorist groups as a way of protesting the sins of the US government. The killing of children, women and innocent civilians is one of the main concerns of the ISIS followers. The US media was accused of ignoring the crime against humanity during the international US military operations in the Middle East. The media did not highlight the different fake news used by the US government to justify their invasion into the Middle East countries (Nacos & Bloch-Elkon, 2018). Some of the US foreign policy implementation processes have created more enemies than friends. An example of such a situation is the invasion of the US forces in Iraq to fight the administration by Saddam Hussein.

In August 1990, Iraq initiated a military campaign against Kuwait. Kuwait underestimated Saddam's intentions and strengths to invade this nation. The assault dishonored global law, and the Bush government was frightened at the possibility of Iraq taking over Kuwait's oil reserves (Frank, 2018). The Americans rapidly began working towards assembling a military coalition to combat Iraq aggression. When Saddam Hussein began invading Kuwait, Arab nations merged with the Bush administration to establish a military coalition to persuade Iraq to remove its troops from Kuwait or face the military invasion by other nations. On 17th January 1991, a broad grounded alliance, led by the American department of defense initiated Operation Desert Storm to free Kuwait from Iraqi seizure. More than 5,000 troops were sent to the region and some of the critics of the war believed that the main aim was to have control over the oil wells in the region for the economic benefits of the US (Frank, 2018). The war on Iraq remains as one of the most notable historical experiences in the world. Even...