The Growing Threat of Radical Jihad

Frank Gaffney spoke with former congressman Pete Hoekstra on Secure Freedom Radio yesterday. Hoekstra is currently the Shillman Senior Fellow at the Investigative Project on Terrorism.

Gaffney asked Hoekstra about his recent study on the frequency and severity of terrorist attacks.

“What we decided to do is take a look at the number of fatalities that we were seeing each and every year as a result of attacks by radical Jihadists… From 2001 to 2006 we were seeing roughly 2,500 people per year who were fatalities as a result of radical Jihadist attacks. Until 2011, that number had grown to around 3,300 but by 2014 and 2015 that number had gone to about 28,000 individuals around the world who were being killed each year as a result of radical Jihadist activities, so really a 7 or 800 percent increase since 2011.”

Gaffney pointed out that most of these deaths are taking place overseas but asked Hoesktra if this trend could ever reach America. He responded:

“What the radical Jihadists are doing is they are using the failed states of Afghanistan, of Libya, of Syria and Iraq and Yemen as launching pads to expand their impact and so what it means is the Middle East is at greater risk, Africa is at greater risk, Europe is at greater risk but you know eventually, this threat, if they are allowed to continue to expand and come closer to our borders that threat is going to come and it’s going to be here in the United States.”

Gaffney noted that one advantage terrorists have in Europe and elsewhere is infrastructure and support through Muslim communities.  Hoekstra agreed, pointing to the example of no-go zones where Jihadists find safe haven and are beyond the reach of local law enforcement. He also suggests that the people of Europe are tired of people being let back into their countries after going to fight for terror groups in places like Syria and that European leaders will pay for this in upcoming elections.

Gaffney then turned to the subject of human intelligence and asked if we’re doing enough in this area. Hoekstra claimed that human intelligence gathering essentially stopped years ago.

“This goes all the way back to the 1990’s when Bill Clinton decided that we were not going to have human intelligence anymore , that we could make it up with electronic surveillance and satellites and those types of things because human intelligence is high risk and it’s very hard. The risk is that you’re going to get caught and you’re going to get embarrassed so Bill Clinton made the decision that we were going to move away from human intelligence and we’ve been trying to recover from that ever since.”

That doesn’t sound very reassuring in today’s world.