Media, Law & Policy

To Politicize the New York City Terrorist Attack is Folly

Wednesday, November 1, 2017, By Sawyer Kamman
Corri Zoli, Director of Research for the Institute for National Security and Counter Terrorism and Research Assistant Professor at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School, is available to speak on the domestic terrorism attack in lower Manhattan.
“The attack looks like another low-tech terrorist attack, similar to vehicular attacks in the last 2 years in London, France, Sweden, Germany, and elsewhere,” says Zoli.  “The inspiration for these attacks comes from ISIS and its online recruitment materials that advocate for the surprise killing of civilians using any available modern tools as weapons—trucks, knives, homemade bombs, etc. Europe has suffered hundreds of deaths due to this “low-tech” but powerful strategy.”
“Congressmembers emphasize that we’re in a high-threat environment given ISIS attacks across the world and given thousands of foreign terrorist fighters returning to their home countries (after the fall of Raqqa),” says Zoli. “Recall that 60,000 foreign fighters joined ISIS in Syria and Iraq since 2012. While recruits are far lower in the US than in France and Britain—not to mention other countries—they were not zero: since 2014, 136 individuals have been charged for ISIS-related offenses in the US, with 79 thus far guilty.”
What can government do?
“Lawmakers and law enforcement need to stay ahead of global terrorist trends and changing strategies, especially after the fall of Raqqa when ISIS operatives are returning home or dispersing into other regions (West Africa-Mali),” says Zoli. “To politicize these issues or to wish them away is folly, as staying ahead of such attacks may likely require bipartisan new laws or procedures, as France issued this week. In addition to domestic/homegrown terrorism, our immigration systems are not immune from these threats, as both the Obama and Trump Administrations knew—both required increased vetting to deal with the specific ways terrorist operatives adaptively targeted migration flows and programs during their respective Administrations. This is a bigger problem in Europe where ISIS operatives in the Paris 2015, Belgium 2016, among others, used refugee flows and passports to skirt border security measures.
“Likely, the VISA lottery program Saipov used to enter the US in 2010 will come under scrutiny for vetting candidates in light of the attack,” says Zoli. “While a small program, after the San Bernardino attack in 2015, President Obama’s DHS head Jeh Johnson and lawmakers—including CNY representative Katko, who leads the House bipartisan Task Force on Combating Terrorist and Foreign Fighter Travel—reevaluated the K-1 VISA program (for fiancée/spouses), some recommending individual’s social media surveillance. The vetting process was determined to be less rigorous than refugee vetting processes and changed. In this case, as with Tashfeen Malik determined to be radicalized before entering the US, the question will be on whether Saipov exhibited signs of radicalization and if he was properly vetted—or whether program changes again need to be made.”
Syracuse University faculty are available to speak to media via phone, email, Skype, or LTN studio. Please contact Scott McDowell, executive director, regional strategic communications at semcdowe@syr.edu or 212-826-1449 or Ellen James Mbuqe, director of news and PR at Syracuse University, at ejmbuqe@syr.edu or 315.443.1897.